As 2016 draws to a close I say Goodbye and Thank you.  This page on Blogger© has been dear to my heart for ten years and has helped me grow immensely.  In the early days I kept it going after receiving messages from around the globe of thanks and encouragement and although I did not see any numbers increase in followers, I did know you are there and sending those private messages through.  As the years filled by and I awakened more to who I am and what I'm alive to contribute, I kept this page going just in case anyone was still reading, still getting inspiration from it.  I found it hard to let go and now I'm ready.  I'm not deleting the account yet.  I'm simply not going to post here anymore after today.  Reading through the previous posts for this year you will find the link to my Facebook© page where I now post daily at Remembering Unity and you can find it on Instagram or Twitter too.  In 2017 I am moving interstate and starting a business to support others in learning, growing and expanding their own awareness now that I've gained the tools and experience I needed to be able to offer that.

Always remember that life experience counts.  No book or teacher can ever replace the true value and treasures that life experience can bring if we unwrap the gift properly.  Life truly is a miracle of presence, no matter what we believe hurts us or the suffering we endure.  I pray that we meet again somehow and that if you do read this, you migrate across and join me on the rest of this fabulous journey called life, adding your wisdom to my own.

Thank you sincerely for ten years of joy and purpose - for being my hope of a brighter and more joyous future.  Good bye and Namaste.

June Parkin AFAIM

Aka Gabriella Grace 

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Yesterday marked a milestone for my ego, who is as worthy of love and compliments as is my Inner Child and my Soul self.  The blog post yesterday has received 1k 'likes' and climbing.  That was in my wish list this year and in the last day of the year it has happened.  By the end of today 2000 of you will be sharing life with me online, connection in love and peace as Remembering Unity.

As I do at the end of each year, I am reflecting on the year that has just passed, the year that has been 2016 for me.  I could reflect on world events but the media will do that for me and as I watch the program I will give thanks for all that and perhaps shed a few tears over passing greats, incredible heroes, heart-moving tenderness and selfless giving.  In my moments of personal reflection though, I will keep it about me.  I like to reflect at the end of each year on my own passing greats; my own incredible heroes, my own heart-moving tenderness and my own selfless giving.  I like to reflect on my own first-hand experiences and achievements, my own losses, my own griefs and joys, my own successes and on my own growth as a person.  I like to compare myself as I entered the year to myself as I'm leaving the year and then to congratulate, commiserate, console, consolidate, and compliment myself over a year well done.  I've learned over time that even mistakes are jewels and gems.  Nothing I do is by accident whether I can see it that way at the time or not.  I've learned that heart ache and heart break open my heart if I allow it to.  I've learned that full surrender makes way for miracles and more and I've learned more humility and discernment.  

I first awoke to this type of end-of-year reflection in 1998 (which was also a 9 year of completion).  I had been keeping a diary to monitor the casual work I was doing and my then husband and I had written a small list of things we wanted to one day get for our home.  We'd bought a lovely house and wanted to add a few things like air conditioning and a new bathroom but like most people we knew, we were living paycheck to paycheck and were not seeing a way to change that.  We wrote a wish list in the back of my work diary and forgot about it.  At the end of the year I was transferring birthdays into the new-years diary when I came across this list.  As I began looking at it, remembering fondly the day we wrote it, I realised in amazement that without any further effort on our part, we had acquired all but two of the things on our wish list and, it was tens of thousands of dollars worth!!  I was stunned and after adding the two things to the top of a new list, we created another list.  It then became an annual tradition for me and I still have each list to remind me that manifesting is very real and quite easy, particularly if I let go of attaching to the outcome.  By making a list and not thinking about it again for a whole year, I let go of expectations and enjoy each moment instead.  I've learned to trust that whatever I need will come, no matter what money I have myself.  

There are many types of abundance I can manifest but none means more to me than love.  Love for me is the reason I live, the air in my lungs, my purpose for being, my strength, my courage, my all and my guide.  I have more than once given up all worldly things and more for love and have found such miracles within that surrender.  Love holds no equal for me and I cherish every single person who has had any kind of impact in my life.  To my Self, my Soul Self, my human Self, the me that I believe I am; to my Inner Child/my egoic child-Self, Parent Self and my Adult Self whom I live, love, fight and breathe for; to the amazing man I am married to who has shown me how to love myself with equal determination and tenderness to the love I have for others; to my incredible children who have taught me the true meaning of unconditional love; to friends who've stood by me when I'm difficult to understand or be with; to family who never stop loving me and believing in me; to persecutors who have attacked and vilified me; to perpetrators of all manner of abuse against me; to my spiritual and soul families; to acquaintances, people I have met and moved on from; to angels that pop into my life and pop straight out again; to those who serve me in stores; to those I only know online; to random people I might run into only once ever in my life; to those who follow my blog but never say hello - I cherish every, single one.  Each has made an impact on my life and at the end of each year I reflect on that, on what the impact is, and then I thank you and send you love.  You are the words in my life's story, you are the music of my heart that keeps it beating in time, you are the beat of the drum that I follow, you are the stars in my sky at night and you are the world as I know it.  You are who I see when I look in the mirror and I love every facet of who we are as one.

Thank you for being my world, my Body, my love, my light, my life, my IS-ness.  Thank you for helping me to write the most fabulous story ever told and thank you for being such a blazing testament to love and to life.  May the year ahead bring you as much love and joy as you have brought to me.  Happy New Year.

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Today I say goodbye to the pain of trauma; to the part of traumatic experiences that I used to find so objectionable; to the perception of abuse as my nemesis; to the hatred I once had of abusers; to the ego's fear of Love.  Today I embrace my true self, my unified self, my full soul self.  Today I set my Self free of the unconscious programming I created to keep myself dreaming and I awaken to Light and Love intentionally and fully informed.  Today I choose freedom and embrace it like the lover that it is.

I've spent years now churning straw into gold, spinning the trauma wheel to create a fantastic golden thread of freedom for my spirit to use to find me on the ground while I reached equally as eagerly above to pull it towards me.  I did not really know what I would find.  I did not even actually know that I was spinning either, but I spun and spun until it was all churned.  All I really knew was that I HAD to love, I had to love everyone and everything even when I was sure I couldn't love anything at all.  I felt compelled to love and so I spun.  Throughout the past 12 years in particular, I've mindfully used all traces of trauma to heal, learn and grow.  I held tightly to the stories of being abused for the first thirty five years of my life as if those stories were children I had to love, nurture and cherish.  There was a need to recognise something I simply couldn't see and until I saw it, those children cried out for my attention like starving infants will.  What I could not see until recently was that victimhood is a natural stage of development for an alchemist, a warrior, a shaman, a healer.  I had been a victim but had never allowed myself the honour of recognising I was one.  I had spent my whole life defending my right to be separate and free on the outside, to be able to grow and develop in whatever way I needed but, I did not afford my inner self the same grace.  Over this past 12 years of super-intense healing, I see now I have been learning to do just that and, wouldn't you know it took another traumatic experience for me to see just how illusionary my perceptions of abuse had been.  

Make no mistake, abuse is wrong. Abuse costs this world a staggering fee in more ways than just financial.  Abuse is wrong, insidious, detrimental and cruel.  Like everything though, it has a purpose too and only those ready to feel the complete fullness of its pain will come to understand how it contains any Light at all.  Some will be ready for that in this lifetime and some will not but eventually we will all be ready and that's when Love will truly overcome.  Abuse causes pain that wreaks havoc and destruction at a level many cannot yet conceive and the world as a whole is becoming very aware of it now.  Victims becoming survivors are standing up, speaking out, raising their hands, opening their hearts and declaring war on abuse everywhere we turn.  Thankfully there is a road beyond this too, a peaceful lane of winding turns meandering through the paradise of realisation and recognition.  This lane leads to Love, to the miracle of life as a free Soul.  In this place beyond perception lies answers to every question the heart and mind can utter and it calls us all home to its joy.  To get there though, we must evolve and learn, open our hearts and minds to ourselves and to  each other - even to abusers.  I have taken that old pain and spun it into the finest threads now, it hangs like jewellery across my heart as I wave my hand gently across the waters of my Soul in peaceful gratitude for all it has taught me, for all it has made of me.

As I purposefully let go of all of the perceptions of pain, I must honour the most recent pain too.  This is how I became aware of who I truly am.  I had found my calling, I had found my joy and my honour.  I had found my soul family and I thrived, flourished and excelled.  I flew higher than I knew wings could take me and then I felt abused again.  I screamed in horror only to be told I could not speak of my pain at all, that I must remain silent and apologise to everyone else for feeling hurt in any way, that I must never call what I was experiencing 'abuse'.  I was horrified, furious, terrified, enraged and incredulous.  Here, in this haven I faced the very monster I had worked so hard to escape.  I had believed I was helping to save the world from abuse, not just saving myself and now here, I was again abused.  It was indescribably painful and my ego was in its most powerless and vulnerable position, just as I'd intended it to be.  I had unconsciously recreated the original feelings that surrounded me at my earthly creation - powerless terror.  I had told myself that with all of my healing I was ready to rebirth into this world by choice, as Love, through Love.  I had no idea then that life would provide exactly the theatre I needed for that delivery to occur.  I feel fortunate that my faith was so strong when I began that particular journey as I had only that at times to draw on.  Crucifying the ego is a humbling, terrifying, lonely and virtually indescribable experience and as much as I adored my wonderful and supportive husband already, I now know no more loving human being.  The torture he witnessed within me was hideous and yet he loved me all the more.  After so long of facing my life head on, staring down every angel who tried to assist and doing life on my own terms always, I had no choice but to ask for help, to reach out for support.  He stayed patient through it all and held the space for me to fully parent myself back into existence.  Only a tiny number of friends stayed in touch, the strength of my rage too much to endure as I fought my very self for control.  It took everything I had to keep moving forward and I'm thankful to have seen a pattern in it all quite early on.  

Today I am choosing to lay that last trauma to eternal rest.  Yes I was abused in my eyes.  No it was not okay and I will never allow it again.  I will never give them another chance to do that again.  As of today I am silent no more.  I honour the process of life and of having a voice and I intend no harm becomes of it.

What I am grateful for though is what true gifts it has brought to me and for that I thank them all.  It is through that suffering that I have had the most profound growth of all.  I had to see my own reflection in their behaviour and I didn't like it at all.  I had to see how I was really treating myself, how I was still actually abiding myself.  I had to choose to change fast.  I had to let go again of all of the limiting labels I had allowed my mind to apply, to define everything and keep it all safe; I had to relinquish my control, beliefs, values and perceptions all over again and this time I knew I would survive.  I had to allow my heart to break open consciously and resist the urge to cause us all more pain.  I had to be reborn and to grow up all at once and I have.  I had to see that they silenced me because I was silencing myself.  I do not believe those people would intentionally cause me the pain I went through and I do not believe they are responsible for my pain either.  I needed to see my reflection and they became my mirrors.  It has only been through seeing myself in them that my heart was finally able to break open fully; to provide enough force to be able to crack the dragons egg within my chest to reveal the blazing Light of Love inside.  Even though abuse is awful, it created the inferno needed to force open the pod encasing the seed of my soul.  I had to accept I was a victim in order to survive, as 'victim' is merely a stage of development, just like symbiosis is.  For all the time I avoided awareness of my victimhood status, I stayed a victim until I saw the light' of it.  I silenced myself because I felt responsible for the pain of others if I spoke up and that is rescuing that comes from ego also.  I apologise to myself now and everyone else I disempowered through my rescuing.  Today I let this go in honour of us all; in honour of the love I believe so totally in.  Today abuse is leaving my consciousness and my unconscious too; I release it all with Love and let it go.

In 2017 my soul will soar to EVER newer heights as I ground myself into a life of service with joy, passion, surrender and love.  I have created all of the parameters now that I need for that to happen and I thank every soul along the way that I have ever met. No matter what part you played in my life, you have helped me and I am grateful.  I love you as me and I love me as you.  Namaste.

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lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu

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Letting go is so important in the pursuit of happiness for me.  At the end of each year I have long paused to reflect on what 'theme' I want my new year to have.  Similar to a New Years resolution, creating a theme gives me focus for the year ahead.  It is only over the past few years that I recognised I have also been letting go of things which might hold me back too.  Now that I accept that every moment of my life has purpose and meaning and that it happens exactly as it's meant to with or without my awareness, I am being mindful of letting go of more.  Letting go frees me up to embrace life and to love more openly and I have held on to so much for so long in order to be who I am now but, there is so much I no longer need or want so it's time to let go of it all with love, passion and intention.  

I have long noticed that December has a different energy to the rest of the year.  I saw for a long time that any issues in my community that may have been simmering all year, usually come to a head in December.  By January they had either opened up volcano-like for honesty, clearing and healing or, they had just disintegrated and died again.  For me, that's what December is for - letting go.  Just as we spring-clean our homes in Spring, so too can we use that season to Spring-clean our inner world, dusting, cleaning, preparing for the hot burn of summer to rush through like wildfire and turn the undergrowth of our unconscious to cinder so new growth can occur.  In my incredible Australian environment there are trees and grasses that will not germinate and grow new seedlings without the scorching blaze of a tremendous bushfire and, this week as I gently and mindfully collect one such grass for rejuvenation purposes, I'm also aware of how much my inner world needs the same fire from time to time.

I think it's that fire that most of us fear and have forgotten to tend.  The coals burn for aeons within and slowly heat until the pressure builds enough to slough off any dross we've collected.  Occasionally a wild-fire whips up within, destroying everything in its path so we can rise again from the ashes and recognise the strength and wonder of who we truly are underneath our illusionary fears.  After the fire, new growth gently pushes through and grows is into a whole new being with a wiser and more sturdy countenance.  We truly are as nature and yet many of us have no memory of that, no desire to know.  In Remembering Unity, I'm choosing to know, choosing to embrace this wisdom within and without.  The more I learn to love and accept myself, the more I love and accept nature.  I AM nature.  Nature I AM.  

The outside temperature here today is hovering around 40C and it's hot!! There is a strong, hot wind.  Conditions are right for a huge bushfire and I pray there are none of those without.  I am reflecting though on how I can use the metaphor that nature is providing to sear the year away from me and let it go before it ends.  This year I've had a tremendous experience of really aligning myself with everything of my need to be Remembering Unity - remembering that I'm one with all things.  I have chosen to reflect on everything I can and transmute it into love because that is who I AM.  I've recognised that all of the 'stuff' I had not previously let go of was serving a purpose for me and I accepted it, acknowledged it, respected it, thanked it, forgave it and myself and, turned it into gold within.  Knowing myself as I do, I know that I will never again hold resentments long; never hate again for more than a moment; never forget to be love for any length of time.  Although never is a long time and I really am only human, I'm not able anymore to embrace those conditions without awareness.  Even my unconscious mind grasps the importance of choosing love now so all negatives quickly flip over to become lessons and gratitudes, usually within moments.

Over the next two days I am focussing my reflecting on everything I choose to let go of.  On New Years Eve I will light my internal bonfire and gratefully hand to that fire everything that has fully served its purpose for me in this life.  I will gratefully and mindfully let go of pain, trauma, negativity, suffering, control issues and more as I pick up my heart and foray into a new and exciting day, month, year and life.  As the Phoenix rises within, so She will rise without and I AM the Phoenix now so I know how to fly above the cinder and dance through the sky again.  Namaste.

RememberingUnity

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In readiness for beginning a new year, a new business, and a new location, I'm letting go of all of the concretised beliefs that no longer serve me.  Today as I head off to work in a paddock, I let go of the old patterns of believing I can never do enough, never be enough, and particularly the word 'never' as it signifies permanence which I don't believe exists outside of my own mind.

I've pulled out my deck of "Choose Your Life-Self Coaching" Cards to be my angels today.  The card I drew was "Finances Emotions" which is very timely.  I'm currently cutting and picking grass to make a living and although I'm very proud of myself for the self caring and mindfulness I'm enjoying this time, it's still quite difficult for me physically.  The positive in that for me is that I'm learning even more and can see how far I've come.  This morning I awoke devastated that help has not come after all and I will need to just accept it.  More blessings as lessons I know but I'm struggling today so I honour that. 

Reflecting in these questions will provide more healing and awareness and I'm always up for that.  I pray you have a good day too 💞💞💞🙏🏽💞💞💞

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Temperatures are climbing fast in this part of the world this week (Eastern Australia) with a peak of around 42C expected on Thursday and Friday.  As always, I'm using this heat 'wave' to cast my attention internally, to use the fire of nature to burn up any possible detritus I no longer need to carry.  I'm enjoying the awareness of alchemising the end of year within and how much opportunity getting rid of old stuff creates for receiving new.  Into this end-of-year fire I walk, allowing all remnants of blame, shame, regret, misunderstanding, reaction, shrinking, unhelpful judgments I've made, assumptions, blindness, fear, trepidation, blindness, expectation, and more to slough off me and out of me.  This week signifies preparation for the beginning of a brand new year and I am cleansing, nesting, opening myself up to the joy of goodbye in readiness for the sweeter joys of hello.  

I awoke this morning even earlier than usual with the reflection of life fresh in my minds eye.  As I wiped the sleep from my eyes at 3.25am, bidding my soul self and my inner child 'good morning beautiful', I saw more people from my past and more situations that had not been entirely what they had appeared to be at the time.  With love I thanked them all, even those that had been painful at the time.  As days go by I am finding it easier in each moment to just accept that every experience was one of Love and that only my egos fear stood in the way of my seeing that before.  Old judgments and assumption now float calmly to the surface of my inner ocean without my prompting and just like ocean foam; they peak, splay, dissolve and merge back to Source within me - all in a matter of moments.  I no longer need to hold on to any of it.  I no longer need to search through it, question it, grab at it, or even barely notice it.  I simply trust that it's arising to be loved and released and allow the process to occur without so much controlling from me.  I recognise that although I let go of the old overt, ultra-controlling tendencies I had in the past, there are still covert and interesting ways that I exert control, particularly over my own self.  While self control is vital for maturity and responsibility, there are limits too and I crossed a lot of them at times, practically swaddling my inner self, constricting in unhealthy ways.

Learning how to re-parent myself is not as simple as it may seem.  I've taken to it with the same fervour I took to having my children.  That love I have for my kids has really brought re-parenting myself home to me in glorious ways and taught me so much.  So many different ways to parent and yet it is the intuition that can parent the most effectively and successfully.  Research adds knowledge to the mix for a balanced and informed parenting style that can stand the tests of time.  Again I find myself amazed and grateful at just how much joy, love and learning my children have brought to me in this lifetime.  Now I can add my Inner Child to that list of people who have brought me gratitude, joy and learning.  Now I can count my Self amongst my greatest blessings because I've found a way within to see everything and everyone as actual blessings.  Interesting to me is that after years of wondering why I felt unable to forgive one perpetrator of sexual assault in particular for many years, I now find myself not only having forgiven but grateful.  I'm not grateful to have been abused or assaulted and I pray Life finds a new way for soul growth in this world.  I'm grateful for what my Soul has gleaned from what happened and I'm grateful that forgiveness exists so that I could find it.  In finding any gratitude for such a horrible experience, thousands of other formerly painful experiences have risen up within me to vapourise into the bliss of no-thing-ness.  To take their place as foam atop the waves for their moment too.

I've learned that none of it matters anymore and that I've learned everything I possibly could from it all so there is no further need of keeping it.  I've also learned that I kept it for as long as I needed to keep it so I have no reason to judge myself for keeping it so long either.  Had I not done things exactly as I have throughout my life, I would have had a different experience and, while it may have been a real positive to do it differently, my Soul sees the experiences I've already had as real positives so que sera sera.  Let it go.  Let it go.  This week I let it all go.  While many are bemoaning 2016 for all of the struggle, loss, grief, heartache, stress, pain and turmoil it brought, I am eternally grateful to this year for the blessings of closure it has torn away from me to break my heart so completely that only love can dwell here now.    Yes it hurt, yes I bled, yes I struggled and yes I have thought I was stark raving mad at times.  I feel so much peace because of it now though that I wouldn't change a moment of it.  My Soul has come home and home is where my heart is, shiny and new, clean and polished.  Like a beautifully crafted diamond sourced from the deepest coal in the darkest regions, every facet is flawlessly unique and spectacular in its own way.  The diamond could not be as stunning if any facet were different in any way.  As this year ends in a blaze of glory, I embrace the heat to give that final polish to the diamond that is me and I look forward to seeing what the beautiful new year ahead will bring.  With grace I know I will thrive and prosper and I have all that I need within me always.  My mirror is no longer broken and I see clearly the reflections of my life.  Time now to embrace and become the mirror.  Namaste.

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Christmas is a time I cherish because I can see how much Love  lights up the people around me.  It's as if all around the world, choices are being made to be loving, kind, generous and cheerful.  It's also a chance for me to explore my own Spirit and excavate more of what I think makes me separate from anyone else - a time for Remembering Unity.  I feel more at one with everyone at Christmas as loving feels easier then for me.  Like anything else, I choose to use Christmas to raise my own consciousness and open my heart more to the infinite abundance of unconditional love that I know is throughout creation awaiting my attention.  Even though every day feels like Christmas to me because I've been gifted another day of life, Christmas Day feels even more special.  Today the child that I am inside - the pure, innocent, trusting, vulnerable, courageous, spontaneous, free, connected, unified Child within - rises to the surface to deliver the Light of the Christ message to me and everyone around me.  Religious or Spiritual matters not to me for it is Nature and Natural and I have heard no other person describe it in a way that feels like my own truth.  

I choose today as always to think lovingly towards all others, no matter what my ego demands that I judge instead.  If I find myself in judgment, I will lovingly correct my own course through choosing new thoughts and sending more love.  Life is far too short to judge and blame and today, I have the gifts of Grace, Love, Joy, Light, Music, Laughter, Smiles and Hugs to deliver and receive.

May your day be filled with gifts such as these no matter what you may or may not celebrate.  May you and those you care about be safe and healthy today and always and if you are struggling for any reason, I hope you find a way to bring joy to someone else so that it may touch your own heart too.

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Merry Christmas everyone.

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Merry Christmas everyone.  May your day be joyful and filled with love.  May your thoughts be positive.  May your words uplift.  May you radiate light and love.  May your heart be light and be filled with as much love for yourself as it is for others.  May your Inner Child have fun and be nurtured.  May you eat healthy food you enjoy and stop when you are full.  May the gifts you receive be as valuable as the gifts you bring to this life by being yourself.  May this festive season see you safe, happy, authentic, prosperous and aligned with your highest self.  May you find strength in your own faith regardless of how the world may view it or judge it.  And may we all spend time Remembering Unity and feeling less alone and separate.  

Merry Christmas.

Bon Nadal.

Feliz Navidad.

Joyeux Noel.

Buon Natal.

Frohe Weihnachten.

Boas Festas.

Streken Bozhik.

Mata-Ki-Te-Rangi.

Mele Kalikimaka.

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Christmas is the time of year I like to reach into my heart and pluck out the jewels I've stored there over time; memories of influential experiences.  I like to ponder the rebirth of innocence that I can potentially deliver to myself in this gift of life.  Bearing the Christ-child back into my consciousness is such an honour and a blessing that it fills me with cheer any time I think about it and not just Christmas.  Tomorrow I will grant my precious Inner Child a whole day of delight: of love, family, presents and presence, joy, laughter, songs, sumptuous foods and National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, snuggles, hugs, kisses and rest.  More and more now, every day is Christmas Day for my beloved Inner Child receiving these gifts so regularly.  

So today as I cook up my first ever unsweetened, vegan Christmas food with wonder and delight at the incredible flavours and textures that nature has provided me, I will cast my mind with Love and gratitude to the biggest influences of my life: family, friends, colleagues, pets, homes, jobs, books, films, music, quotes, role models, past Christmases, and my own gifts given to others.  As part of preparing to let go of everything I am not taking with me into the new year, I start today gathering the beauty of my life closer to my heart so that when I let go of things, my heart is not achingly empty, because it doesn't need to be.

My gratitude goes first to my parents for being the vehicles of my birth and then to my Nanna & Granddad for their care, love and for the amazing Christmas atmosphere they created each year they were alive (my inlaws did this wonderfully too); to my brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews, in laws and cousins; my children, husband, friends, and others.  If I've met you, (even if only online) I love you.  If I haven't met you yet - I love you too - that's how I'm made.  Unconditional love does not require me to know you well, meet you, or even like you.  Love is love.

Today I give thanks in particular for Mrs Mum, a neighbour who is the worlds best cook and provided me with amazing tastes when I was growing up so that I knew what tasted really good.  I give thanks to my friend who dared to be vegan and took time out of her passionate insistence that the world join her cause to post a recipe on Facebook so I had somewhere to start.  I give thanks for the woman who insisted I blame everyone from my past for how I'm feeling and behaving now so I could come to experience how wrong it feels for me to be like that.  I give thanks today as every day for the gift of my incredible children who teach me so much about love and humility, and about unconditionality.  I give thanks for my husband who has brought the miracle of love alive to me and shows me in every moment how simply and easy loving truly can be, for allowing me to love him with complete abandon and freedom.  Most of all today, for the first Christmas ever, I give thanks for me; for my huge heart, amazing grace, imperturbable intent, diligence, determination, strength, courage and commitment.  I could not be as capable of as much love as I am, without the massive sacrifices and intuitions that I have allowed myself to have.  

Who or what have been the biggest influences for you?  Those people, places or things that have grown you in some way, opened your heart or mind more to love?  Who or what has lit your fire?  I invite you to join me here in the comments to share the love this Christmas and put a concentrated energy of love out into the world.  Merry Christmas.

RememberingUnity

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lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu

#innerchild #mindfulness #inspiration #healing #awakening #light #selflove #soul #unity #gratitude  #mythoughts #livinglife #love #remembering #beingreal  #divinity #gabriel #healingtrauma #follow4follow #spiritual #faith #faithful #god #grace #spirituality #trust #peace #hope #wisdom #compassion #forgiveness #thankful #knowledge #meditation #meditate #guidance

Blame is an insidious programme, an intriguing, mesmerising and intoxicating mass of thoughts that create separateness for any unaware wanderers.  No matter how many years I seem to spend reflecting on my own responsibilities for my self and my life, my ego still finds ways to apportion blame.  I find it is only through mindfulness that I gain respite from this old friend Blame.  I learned a few years ago how the human mind (aka ego) is negatively geared and wired to blame as a set-point.  That began my reflections on how much sway my ego had over my own positivity and mindset and I have to own that I was stunned.  It seemed for a while that no natter where I looked within, I found my ego blaming and judging every little thing I perceived in my world, including myself!!  There was no rest from it and I wondered how I had survived  my mind at all for so long.  The eternal optimist though, I rose to the challenge and proceeded to continue those reflections, loving what arose as best I could.

These days it's easier in many ways for me to be positive and to take full ownership of my own feelings, thoughts, reactions and experiences.  Therein lies the adventure though: as we become more aware, subtleties increase and dangle huge carrots for the mind to chase.  With dedication and devotion, I've learned that I can actually allow my ego to chase its own tail while I sit back and watch it.  Sometimes I have fun and sometimes I still get drawn in.  What I choose to celebrate is the fact that I'm learning anything from it at all.  I am aware now of how much more loving I am than how I used to be.  Although I have always thought of myself as loving and gracious, I have often not been too and it's more important to me to own my truth than to delude myself even one extra moment in my life.  I used to hate some things and some people with unbridled passion as I blamed them for my heart breaking.  I thought heart ache and heart break were tragedies that neither I nor anyone else should ever have to experience.  Anything that caused heartache or heartbreak would get my full vehemence because I could blame the cause for the effect right?  

Now that I can easily observe the Divine gift that is often invisibly wrapped inside any heartache large or small, I have allowed the blame to begin taking a more rear-placed seat in this bus called me.  Blame comes from the ego which is a child and needs guidance and parenting.  Allowing that child part of me to blame another because I'm afraid to believe there could be any kind of gift within my pain is letting myself and that child within me down.  Creating boogeymen and demons to mask my own fragments of self, to explain the world to me, the horrors my ego paints into the picture is something I have done for a long time.  The true miracle for me now has been in opening my heart up enough to break it completely open.  There is a constant sound of pure divinity pouring from my heart now and, even in pain these days, my loving heart leaps in to find gifts within my pain.  It's becoming easier and easier to not blame but to absorb the pain, flow with it to its peaceful release and embrace the bliss of what it has taught me.  I no longer have to shout about injustices because I don't blame them for the suffering my poor ego sees anymore.  I no longer have to control things as fervently as I used to because I'm not as threatened by being different or separate as I used to be.  I no longer feel the need to prove anything to anyone else because I know I'm not responsible for how other people experience me.  I no longer break my back trying to win that personality contest called life because I have a greater game to play - the divine play.  I now choose love.

Love breaks my heart, mends my heart, breaks it open all over again and sets my heart on fire.  Love winds me up, calms me down, sets my compass, sets my sails, fills my lungs, soothes my mind and laughs with me while it's laughing at me too.  Love brings me to life and asks that I die to it a thousand times a day, it grows me, shrinks me, blinds me, opens my eyes again, pulls me down to the depths of my being, and then raises me higher than I've ever dared imagine growing, before dashing me down again to ground within my being again and tucking me in at night.  Blame and love dance a powerful pas-des-deux within me that with awareness and mindfulness, can become and has become an incredible recital of Olympian magnificence playing out in the ballroom of my Souls' university halls.  Where I once allowed my inner George Orwell to write out my beliefs with 1984-esque precision and paranoia, I now require a much more whimsical and less bleak storyline to explain my world to me.  Opening my heart up even more fully to the cellular brilliance of who I am and the divine miracle of who I am beyond that is breaking that heart of mine permanently - or perhaps more precisely - breaking the hard shell I once kept around that heart to stop it from breaking because I could not fathom pain as a gift.  Now I'm able to keep my embrace secure when I break so there's no need for the wall anymore.  Blame and love can cavort around until the ego tires itself out completely and allows someone else to finish the dance for it.  No part of me has to do it all, alone, anymore.

RememberingUnity

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lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu

#innerchild #mindfulness #inspiration #healing #awakening #light #selflove #soul #unity #gratitude  #mythoughts #livinglife #love #remembering #beingreal #healingtrauma #follow4follow #spiritual #faith #faithful #god #grace #spirituality #trust #peace #hope #wisdom #forgiveness #thankful  #meditation