That which I seek is also seeking me is a principle of the heart for me. If I remain true and connected to the vision in my heart, including with relationships, the hearts who carry the resonance of this same vision are also seeking me. It may be through a book, a professional meeting, over tea, sharing a meditation, or engaging in a coaching conversation, but the resonance of creating peaceful relationships, relationships with meaning, guides the unfolding connection.

Creating a vision for peaceful relationships takes time, energy and creative imagining – they don’t just happen. And these visions can grow and change as people do within the relationships.

When I help couples who are thinking about marriage or who are married, one of the questions I invite them to consider is what ‘vows’ they will make or have made to each other. I think of these ‘vows’ as guiding principles for the marriage which will support and serve as codes of behaviour in the way you seek to share and build and manifest your dreams and intimate relationship with each other. Even in significant friendships, core values, strengths and principles come into play if we want these friendships to grow, to be healthy and to fulfill our need for connection and love.

One of the greatest disconnects I hear among couples and even family members is the difference between ‘who you were’ and ‘who you are today.’ Probably there are strengths and core values that may still be part of the person when you met them or when you were both younger as siblings, for example. At the same time, how you have come to understand these core values and strengths, how you have come to live the habits associated with these strengths,  how you have chosen interests or lifestyle choices related to these core values may have evolved.

We are all becoming. Life changes us. We lose jobs. We have a health crisis. We suddenly awaken to a new passion in a new career or hobby. We meet someone who meets us back heart to heart and we are changed. The inner essence of who we are wants to explore the potential of our hearts and of our capacity to love. Life provides these opportunities, often in ways we never expected. All kinds of life lessons will come our way and we will change as a consequence of how we engage with life and the lessons we gain. We evolve. We become more and more of the inner essence we came to discover and be.

The issue is that many layers often cover over, hide, even distort this true inner essence and so as this truth of who we are begins to surface, our family members, our friends, our lovers can sometimes feel betrayed and deeply angry and hurt with who we become. We have changed and the expectations and sometimes lack of shared guiding principles and vision for the relationship may leave them shipwrecked and heart-broken.

When I explore this dynamic with couples or family members in conflict, one key issue is that the expectations and the guiding principles (or vows) are viewed differently or rarely are articulated in a way they understand in the context of their lives. Vows and family ‘rules’ were made as a reflection of ‘who’ each of them were at that moment. Rarely, was a clear vision really shared with discussions about what guiding principles would support them as they change on their shared path.

If you want to create peaceful relationships, you need to have a shared vision with your partner, or family member, or friend. But you must first have some notion of what peaceful relationship means to you.

Some of you have started already to work at this vision of creating peaceful relationships with your purchase of Wisdom’s Way to Creating Peaceful Relationships: Your 2014 Working Guide. Thank you and I commend your efforts. This week, begin to really focus, reflect, imagine and write down what your vision for peaceful relationships includes. Remember, what you seek is also seeking you. The quality of your map is what creates more ease and clarity in your goals along the journey toward an evolving destination!

I have included a few questions to get you started (remember to include all the aspects of your life: social, community, health, hobbies, money/investing/budgets, education and personal growth, spirituality, family, friends, work/career):

• What areas do you want your relationship to grow in?
• What problem areas do you want to overcome?
• Do you have dreams that need to be included in your financial plans?
• How does each of you define your spirituality and the way of peace in your relationships?

Today’s blog, and especially the aforementioned questions, are indicative of the work you will be guided through in my new Wisdom’s Way to Creating Peaceful Relationships: Your 2014 Working Guide. It is now available for purchase online and at the Feathers, Rainbows & Roses office. The Working Guide includes a free 20 minute coaching session to help you move through a challenge or block. You might also consider making this theme the focus of a series of individual coaching sessions (and get the Working Guide for free!). So let’s get started!

For help in creating a sustaining and life-affirming vision of peaceful relationships, contact me at 519-886-6732 or via email at Shirley@shirleylynnmartin.com.

Shirley Lynn

May your relationships be filled with love, peace and good fortune!

Yes!  Let me (Lucy) explain …

While working with Shirley Lynn in preparing the 2014 guide book Wisdom’s Way to Creating Peaceful Relationships, I was thinking about my own relationships. In particular, I reflected on a relationship that is very near and dear to my heart – my young dog Rayna. How am I creating a peaceful relationship between us?

Rayna is a large young adult who now has the size, strength and tenacity to resist any physical manipulations (aka ‘man-handling’) if she chooses to. When she has the desire to go in a certain direction, she has the ability to do it. Having had big dogs in my life previously, I knew the frustration of trying to restrain a powerful dog from going or doing something I didn’t want. I also recall how anger (for such ‘disobedience’) could drive me to use tools and techniques that were less than peaceful and did little to enhance our relationship.

Having been down that road a few times in the past, I knew this time I wanted to take a different path. One where respect is mutual; where both of our desires are factored into the equation of a healthy meaningful partnership; where trust and communication are central to our relationship.

Not that our relationship is all comfy and cozy – there are definitely challenges and clashing desires – but the goal is always to remain in (or return to) a place of peace between us. As Rayna moves through her adolescence and tests and pushes harder to assert her own desires and ideas, I have to stay even more consciously committed to our core intention of peace.

I am faced daily with how to peacefully ask Rayna to do something differently without using force or suppressing her personality or desires. Those who share our home are frustrated at times by my choice not to keep a collar on her all the time, but I find it reminds me to consider alternate methods of engagement  – to seek more creative ways of communicating with her about more appropriate behaviour. For me, the collar can too easily  become a means of control and expedience, so when I have the option, I want to exercise creative influence rather than manipulation. Of course, this approach isn’t always feasible (like when guests come to our home). In the real world, we don’t always get what we want.

But back to the guide book Wisdom’s Way to Peaceful Relationships. Without realizing it at the time, I had followed a similar system in designing the relationship I wanted to have with my next dog. I looked back at my previous relationships – at what worked and what didn’t, what I wanted to change and how I was going to do that. I prepared myself as best I could to make this vision come to life – I read a lot of books and other resources, I talked with people who had relationships with their dogs that I admired, and I sought out a trainer who could help me be more creative and resourceful in my commitment for a peaceful relationship with Rayna. And I wrote down what it was that I wanted (my vision) so I could recall it later and bring it to life. I also continue to review and revise as we go along to better reflect our reality and partnership.

What I am learning on this journey with Rayna can be generalized to other relationships as well. I believe when you seek to live peacefully in one relationship, you soon need this to happen in other relationships as well. Otherwise, there is too much discord which will eventually infiltrate your so-called peaceful relationship. But you have to start somewhere, and why not with the one nearest and dearest to your heart? The journey begins with that first step.

I encourage you to pick up the new Wisdom’s Way to Peaceful Relationships to focus your quest in evaluating, re-defining, and even changing your relationships to reflect the peace and harmony you desire in your relationships. Buy a pdf version on-line and get started today, or purchase a printed version at Shirley Lynn’s office. You can also get it free with the purchase of a Wisdom Package. Whichever way is best for you, I know it will get you thinking and moving toward more peaceful living … so why wait?

Submitted by Lucy Martin

Recently I was working with a client who became aware of how ‘fear of failure’ was getting in the way of their path to a new life direction. Throughout our conversation, we explored the positive role failure can have in our life and how we can use it to empower ourselves in the midst of failure rather than be paralysed with fear or stone-walled by it.

Part of our discussion included the analogy of an athlete, whose muscles need to break down before they can re-build them bigger and stronger. In this way, muscles need to ‘fail’ in order to become stronger, which can contribute toward overall longevity of health. Moreover, we can rebuild and repair our muscles through eating or taking in proper amounts and sources of amino-acids (proteins). Since only 20-30% of our muscles are made up of protein (the rest is water), we must eat enough protein to give our muscles the building blocks they need to get bigger and sustain their core strength. We also need to allow enough time for rest and recovery for our muscles to rebuild.

Just like every autumn when the leaves fall, life breaks down, only to re-build and potentially become bigger and stronger following the winter’s rest – given the proper nourishment and growing conditions. I suggested that failure is inherent in the fabric of our existence. We need to come to terms with failure and gain the wisdom and power we can from our failures, including in our relationships.

One of the powers of doing daily spiritual practices is that we begin to build acceptance and equanimity about what is happening in the Now, in the present moments of our day and life. Exercising the power of acceptance when failure strikes us provides us with the ‘protein source’ for re-building. We will all fail. It’s integral to living! If we fear failure, we will fear living. When we fear living, we will shortchange ourselves of the best kind of relationships we deserve.

Good healthy relationships in which we feel connected and secure and loved sustain us, even in the midst of life’s most difficult challenges. Studies repeatedly highlight the power of healthy and connected relationships as the ‘protein source’ for good health and mental well-being.

One of the self-destructive habits we fall into with ‘having failed’ is that we hide what happened, sometimes with ourselves and often with others. The result is that the shame of these failures begins to disintegrate our sense of worthiness and confidence in our capacity to be loved because we ‘have failed’. This feeling and habit of shame – which takes many forms such as withdrawal, hiding, aggressiveness, criticizing and blaming, or even trying to annihilate ourselves in the extreme – can often show up as conflict and  disconnection in relationship, especially with those who matter most, whether personal or collegial.

Rather than let our failures destroy us, I suggest we find ways to benefit from them. The following strategies offer to do just that:

• Sharing our failures with a trusted other who can compassionately listen with us while still loving us without judgement or blame
• Taking time to contemplate the lessons and valuable insights about what we learned and what we can or will do differently next time (write it down!)
• Identify the knowledge or skills we need to learn or improve to better create the opportunity for the outcomes we want (ie. better listening skills so we can build improved connection and trust with those we love … then take action toward learning it)
• See the ‘failure’ as a sacred opportunity for growth and soul wisdom (restores the goodness of our humanity)
• Feed ourselves with ‘proper nutrient’ such as compassionate self-talk which builds up and repairs any broken-down sense of self
• Take time to rest and restore our energy so that we have the strength/power to sidestep the negativity of old self-criticizing and self-shaming habits that may be triggered
• Breathe deeply into our sense of failure and bring light and compassion to the Energy of this sense of failure until the intensity of our negative emotional attachment to it begins to dissipate and lose its power to bind us (the power of self- acceptance).

If you would like a supported way to see clearly where you can turn your relationship failures into relationship wisdom and insight, consider purchasing my newly released Wisdom’s Way to Creating Peaceful Relationships: Your 2014 Working Guide. The book leads you through a creative process to find a clear path to connection, love and relationship success, and opens doors to living your potential in a new way!

I encourage you to value your relationships with your heart to the degree you will do what you must to create the peaceful relationships you desire. Namaste,

Shirley Lynn

If you are like me,

• You know the value of having relationships that give to us and nurture us because they feel harmonious, calm, balanced and honest.
• You deeply appreciate and value relationships where you can be authentic and share who you are without hiding or shrinking away the essence of your soul.
• You love and deeply value the experience of joy and laughter that relationships of ease can foster!  These are the deeply valued relationship experiences of connection.

Sometimes these relationships are gifts and come naturally. However, even the best of relationships call us into self assessment and growth. Most of us have learned about relationships through the trials and errors of life. Some of the relationships most intimate to us can become the biggest catalysts for awakening to our truer and whole self.

In this new year, we want to focus on how to create these peaceful relationships as well as communication skills, personal growth benefits, identity dynamics, mechanics of listening, boundaries of connection and spiritual practices. These will enhance who we are in our relationships and how we show up to the bonds and heart relationships that matter most to us. Rarely does a magic pill or the application of a onetime technique create the long term success of peaceful relationships. On-going commitment, communication, curiosity, compassion and empathy, acceptance, forgiveness and other choices of healing connection are essential.

One of the gifts I have experienced in creating peaceful relationships is being able to design the kind of relationships I would love to show up to and how I would love for others to show up to me. Dreaming and designing our vision for relationships is an essential part of designing a plan to improve our relationships. We need to foster intentional design, commitment and action to create the best possible opportunities for peaceful relationships. We need to discover the best in our present relationships and learn from the failures in our relationships.

When we learn from the failure in our relationships, we can sift through the grief and losses which inevitably become the residue of these failures – and awaken to the insights we need to integrate into our lives. What is considered ‘best’ and what has been experienced as ‘failure’ must all be integrated within in order to understand and make true conscious steps to creating peaceful relationships.

Just as we plan and develop goals for our career, our health, our investments, we also need to invest the same kind of creative energy into the quality and expression of our relationships. We are hard-wired to be in relationship and without them, we will experience a ‘failure to thrive’. But we can choose to grow and evolve so we can know the joy and blessing of peaceful relationships.

I believe so strongly in the power and harmony of peaceful relationships that I have compiled Wisdom’s Way to Creating Peaceful Relationships: Your 2014 Working Guide. This is a wonderful resource to guide you to this better way of being and relating.

This book is designed to take you through a process of  reflection, dreaming and learning in a very supportive way. You begin on a journey of remembering and discovering what has been the best and the worst of times in your relationships. With these insights and desires ‘in front of you’, you will then be prepared to design your goals and personal action plan to create the peaceful relationships you have envisioned.

Why do I need this guide book? What will I get out of it?

Wisdom’s Way to Creating Peaceful Relationships: Your 2014 Working Guide promises:

• Clarity in where your relationships are helpful and healthy;
• Better Understanding of what you need and want from your relationships;
• Enriched boundaries of connection in your relationship;
• Improvement in the quality of engagement, presence and connection with those that matter most;
• New Meaning is given to losses and failures, turning them into empathic insights about what you will do differently next time;
• Focus for your attention, intention and love on a vision that captures your heart and soul (because we thrive when our relationships are meaningful, secure and connected);
• Multiple Avenues of Support to help you along the way – for the times when you get stuck or need extra support to open your creative inspiration about how you can improve your relationships.
  • A free 20 minute coaching session is included at any point in your process when you need extra support

This is just what I have been looking for. How Do I Get Started?

1. You can start today. Wisdom’s Way to Creating Peaceful Relationships: Your 2014 Working Guide is just a click away. Get the e-book version for only $13 (tax included).
2. Wisdom’s Way to Creating Peaceful Relationships: Your 2014 Working Guide is also available for purchase at the office. Ask Shirley for your copy. Print versions are $15 (tax included).
3. Wisdom’s Way to Creating Peaceful Relationships: Your 2014 Working Guide isfree when you purchase a Wisdom Plan Soul Coaching Package as part of your regular whole life therapy and coaching journey.

• You might also consider using this Working Guide as the focus for your sessions with Shirley Lynn.

So what are you waiting for?

Every journey begins with the first step. You and those who matter to you most will be grateful that you took it.

For additional information about this Guide Book and what it can do for you, please call or email Shirley Lynn today.

We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.

While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions.

Nothing is more exciting and bonding in relationships than creating together.

Opposition is a natural part of life. Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition – such as lifting weights – we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity. Steven Covey

Now that we have stepped into 2014, some perhaps more excitedly than others, let’s explore what this year can hold for us. In preparing for this coming year, we listened for a theme or a word this past fall that would help us focus our energy, our time and resources, our talents and passion in 2014. One day a theme surfaced in our conversation – creating peaceful relationships. It captured my heart. YES! At Feathers, Rainbows & Roses, we have been working diligently to envision a year where we could support people’s efforts, dreams and resources to creating peaceful relationships in their lives.

Take a moment to reflect on the following questions:

• What energy would you have if your relationships were more harmonious?
• What possibilities and potential within yourself would you embrace and explore if your relationships with those who matter most offered you the connection you desire?
• What sense of inner empowerment and confidence would increase if you developed an understanding of how to listen and communicate when conflict arises?
• What blessing would you imagine opening up to if you had new awareness of how you dance and would rather dance in intimate relationships?

Creating peaceful relationships takes work, patience, commitment, and great courage to speak truthfully. It also takes forgiveness as well as LOVE and compassion. We have concentrated on supporting your personal inner awareness and that support is still necessary and part-in-parcel of creating peaceful relationships with others.

We live in relationships. Whether with friends, family, colleagues and co-workers, mentors, animal companions and even with Nature and the Divine, relationships offer us the best mirrors for learning about ourselves – our shadow, our light, our talents and abilities, our best self, our lesser self. So the spaces of our relationships become a wonderful garden of lessons and growth, of fulfilment and connection, of love and grace.

Conflict becomes an opportunity to be curious and seek understanding and different perspectives. It becomes an opportunity to experience our strength and resilience to love and love and love (this is a lesson Nelson Mandela so wonderfully invited us to learn and practice with him).

As you begin to envision creating peaceful relationships in 2014, we invite you to benefit from the various offerings available through Feathers, Rainbows & Roses and also in sending us your questions as they arise in your musings and meanderings.

As a taste of what is to come this year:

• The 2014 edition of Wisdom’s Way to Creating Peaceful Relationships. This e-workbook focuses on helping you clarify goals to creating peaceful relationships. RELEASE DATE: this week!
• Reiki Training as a path to inner peace and harmony in relationships.
• Cultivating Joyful Living: Balancing Self Care within Relationships workshop (SPRING 2014).
• An audio Peace Meditation you can access as a free resource on my website (COMING IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS).
• Great reading through blogs and other wonderful offerings.
• And more to come!

So find a way to join us and begin to cultivate a path of peaceful relationships which sustain your being and soul growth in 2014. And as always, I am available for private sessions to help you on your journey – call or email today to book an appointment.

Happy New Year to everyone.  May all your lessons be blessings and your abundance and rewards be lessons!

Namaste,

Shirley Lynn

Guest Blog by Mary Martin

The recent ice storm and the subsequent power failure created the opportunity for me to colour a mandala. My choice of mandala and colours used were made with little thought – I just began where the colouring book opened.

I had decided to begin in the centre of the mandala and work outward beginning with a soft coloured centre. However, the colour came out stronger than I anticipated. I had no intention of using the strong yellows and oranges that I ended up using. The result actually turned out quite attractive, with the exception of one colour. But what really caught my attention was the overall combination of strong colours – ones I usually am not drawn to. There was nothing “soft” about it!

I have since reflected on this colouring experience and what it might be saying to me. I am aware that changes have been and will be happening in my life due to my recent surgery as well as my retirement.

In light of this, I have been browsing through a book I bought years ago but have never read called Creating a Spiritual Retirement by Molly Srode. I realized this could be important for me to read because of the sub-title “A Guide to the Unseen Possibilities in Our Lives”. In it, she suggests three steps to discover these Unseen Possibilities: “letting go of who we were, finding out who we really are, and connecting with Spirit.” I find myself having conflicting feelings when I imagine myself surrendering to such a process.

I wonder if this is what the strong colours are in some way trying to convey. What about the one colour that didn’t really fit in the overall picture? What is that trying to say? I find that I can relate to this quote by Molly Srode:

“I am standing here looking where I was yesterday.

Around me is time and space.

Will it be a vast and lonely place

Or will I create

A sacred place in which to dwell?”

As I am poised for 2014 this seems to be the challenge that is trying to present itself. Will I embrace it? What happens if I don’t? Why not ‘just start where the page opens’? Maybe as I live the question the answers will come…

I will close with two additional quotes from her book:

“Now is the time to perceive our spiritual dimension – the strong, silent presence of our spirit.”

“Now is the time to reflect on our lives and recognize the strength of spirit that has been there.”

You may not be recently retired but I still encourage you to reflect with me how we can, in 2014, “create peaceful relationships and sacred places in which to dwell”. Committing to these ideals will surely bring about the “peace on earth” we have been hearing/singing about this Christmas season. Find the courage to embrace the unseen possibilities in the coming year.

Richest Blessings,

Mary

 

 

It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.  W.T. Ellis

 

 

As the holiday season fast approaches, I am again reminded to be grateful for all of my wonderful clients, colleagues, friends, neighbours, family and mentors. May this Christmas Blessing touch your heart.

 

May your inner light shine and grow in radiance

May your giving be as your receiving: full, generous and filled with love.

May your laughter be as frequent as the twinkling of the stars

May your sorrows and sadness be comforted by the whispers of angels who remind you that you are abundantly and infinitely loved, regardless.

May your joy be felt as deeply as the ocean floor

May your compassion be kindly sent to the far corners of the Earth for all our relations

May your pain be transformed by the gift of Grace which guides you and makes you whole

May the circle of Love go round and round and round and round infinitely in your heart.

May you be at ease with a forgiving heart

May you live every moment as though you are confident you are worthy and loved unconditionally

May your peace be anchored in the Infinite Peace.

And if for this season, you have no family to celebrate with or go home to:

May you realize that Infinite Peace is your companion who calms your loneliness and lights your heart with Love so near to you as the tree outside your window.

And if for this season, you cannot be open to Love, may you find quiet time and contemplate the wisdom of Rumi:

Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Namaste,
Shirley Lynn

In the past several days and weeks, I’ve had conversations with numerous people who have commented on 2013 being a year of significant challenges. Losses, major transitions or a cumulative stress from multiple transitions, relationship disruptions, sickness, and deaths have been part of the memories and experiences of 2013. Such events certainly leave their mark on us, and at times may even overwhelm and consume  us. But what else? Where did Spirit show up in your year in unexpected and blessed ways as well?

As we end this year, it may be of value to glance back over this past year and remind ourselves of the goals and dreams we were working toward throughout 2013 At the outset of this year, I personally  completed my own Wisdom’s Way to Living JOY-fully workbook and my ‘spiritual focus word’ for 2013 revealed ‘inner strength.’ Looking back over this past year, and all that I lived, I realize that I have learned and re-learned some great lessons and anchored some soul wisdom.

The first question that came to me in my reflections about what this spiritual focus has taught me and what it now means to me is ‘how did my inner strength increase my love’? Although I could write many blogs on what I learned, here are some key points:

1. When life offers me big challenges, remember to play. Carlie, Rayna and I went sledding this weekend – it was Rayna’s first time. Can you spell FUN? Just a break in the day to go and do something that only required me to be happy in my heart.
2. When life offers big challenges, go it ‘with community’. Ask for help. My inner strength called me to ask for help from those who love me and want the best for me. Why in the world would I want to ‘go it alone’ and bear the burden alone? Never again.
3. Cultivate laughter. Recently, I had to have some very difficult conversations over the period of a weekend. However, we both intentionally shared some fun and laughter even in the midst of our pain.
4. Be more than the ‘pain or the strain.’ These conversations above were interspersed with walking in Nature together, reading a great book together, preparing meals together, talking ‘shop’ and sharing some dreams of what we wanted in between the moments of these difficult conversations. Inner strength meant I could stay in the conversation and find my love to create outcomes I never anticipated going into the conversations.
5. Let my ‘inner strength’ seek where love is. Of course love is in my heart. Yet, we all know the adage that the longest distance one can travel is the one from the head to the heart. We all are seeking love. We only need to go to our hearts. This journey to my inner heart required my ‘inner strength.’
6. Let Grace guide you. A colleague and I have led several Peace Circles this past year and our motto became, ‘let Grace guide you.’ Grace is big enough to show up anywhere, anytime in any situation, regardless how challenging.

I have lots of love in my heart.  My ‘inner strength’ helped me to find more love in my heart which opened the path to experience great love coming from others’ hearts. That is the real gift of the Immanence of the Divine.

We are entering into the Season of Lights in many traditions and as a society celebration. We are about to end this year and begin another. Take time to reflect on this year and what you have learned. Who have you become because of your spiritual focus? Where are you now? What are you doing here that is different and new? How has your love increased?

End this year with class. Take time to contemplate on your blessings, your lessons, your fond memories and honestly acknowledge to yourself what brought ‘pain and strain’. We will be offering the 2014 workbook shortly so you can take your lessons and strains and gains and begin to intentionally create a peaceful 2014. Wishing you the best!

Namaste and Infinite Peace,

Shirley Lynn

As 2013 draws to a close and I reflect upon my lessons and discoveries of 2013, I am struck by the countless opportunities I’ve had to witness the kindness of people who have encouraged, supported and been a blessing to me. I am struck by the countless ways I have been taken care of and been confirmed by a Loving Universe when the knocks of life showed up to serve as a challenge to me.

The gift is not only those who have extended kind words, deeds and thoughts to me over this year. The gift is also my ability and willingness and openness to see and receive them, rather than miss their presence at the moment they were offered. This past year, I focused deeply on this spiritual word ‘love’, and the kindness it evokes in us, even in the face of what is unjust, disrespectful and untrustworthy.

Two events in the past couple of weeks have really brought forward the revelation that the power of love transforms our ‘enemy’ to become our ‘neighbour’. I went to hear Malcolm Gladwell speak on his new book, David and Goliath. The second memorable event is the passing of Nelson Mandela who has so graciously touched the world with his love and kindness.

Malcolm Gladwell wonderfully and creatively told the story of Alva Vanderbilt, a prominent multi-millionaire American socialite and a major figure in the women’s suffrage movement. She was a significant force in the passing of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote in the USA (the amendment being ratified in 1920, 40 years after its first draft). Gladwell offered to the audience that still today, we must remember this woman and her story so that we offer more space for women to re-shape our society.

Nelson Mandela was a lawyer and South Africa’s first black president. Through his love, kindness and savvy wisdom, he led his nation out of apartheid. He became a hero to black people, white people, to people around the world who believed and hoped that racism and apartheid systems can be put to death. President Obama is quoted as saying: “We’ve lost one of the most influential, courageous and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth. He no longer belongs to us — he belongs to the ages.”

Like Alva Vanderbilt, we must remember Nelson Mandela as he showed us a way to offer more space for all races to re-shape our society.

Former NDP Leader, Jack Layton, who died in August of 2011, also spent many hours working for a just society. His life, marriage and work was a testament to the way we must offer more space for people of all colours and orientations who marry for love to re-shape our society. On his deathbed, he wrote these words: “My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

We all have had challenges this 2013, and for some, quite significant. Those who follow the astrological unfolding of our time understand the significant influences that we as humanity and the Earth are experiencing at this time in history. I cannot help but wonder that these great teachers who came to show us what it looks like to love those who sit ‘in the other camp’, and who have now returned ‘to the ages’, still remain in the spirit of our nations’ hearts sharing their light and guiding us to a better world.

I invite you to look back over 2013 and look for where kindness and love showed up. Look for where you experienced it and where it brought a moment of inner peace. Then look again through the past year and see where you might have missed what kindness was shown and offer your deep gratitude for the gift of love that showed up in the way it did.

It may not seem evident at the time because the kind of change these leaders manifested in our world called for a shift in our consciousness, a shift in our legal systems, a shift in our psyche about what is legitimate. Such profound and radical changes are often met with great resistance and fear. The great love and kindness of these radical changes are often not understood or perhaps even experienced as a blessing in the moment by some.

Time and sustainability of their kindness and respect eventually awaken our consciousness to the deep reserve of love they shared with us. We offer our prayers of love and gratitude to the leaders who taught us to love. They also handed the torch to us to carry on. May we do so in whatever ways that brings out the best in each of us. And let’s see how many ‘enemies’ become our ‘neighbours’ still here in 2013 with what remains.

Namaste,
Shirley Lynn

Last Saturday, Shirley Lynn and I (Lucy) led a workshop on enhancing connections with our animal companions. The group shared stories about our connections with animals past and present. We spent quite a bit of time talking about what connection really means and how we go about achieving it. In preparing for this workshop, I spent a lot of time thinking about my connections with the dogs and cats in my life now and in the past. What have I learned from these relationships?

One of my biggest revelations has been to view the world from the perspective of my animal. To actually put myself on the same physical level to see what they see, what catches their attention. I don’t think it was any one animal that asked me to do this, but on numerous occasions when out walking with a dog, I would notice them intently looking at or reacting to something that appeared relatively benign to me. But when I got down to their level, things looked very different and my perspective shifted. *To see what I mean, and especially if you have a little animal, I urge you to lay down on the sidewalk and experience the world from that level. Any wonder that it could be a little frightening and intimidating?

By observing the world from the perspective of the animals in our presence gives us a broader understanding of them as well as our world. Taking that extra moment to pause and look at things from a different position gives us greater insight and appreciation – for the other being as well as the situation at hand. How can that stray plastic bag be anything but alarming yet intriguing? Who’s been to the lamppost today that everyone leaves their ‘post-it notes’ on? How do we react to strangers who immediately want to touch and request tricks? The examples are endless…

One of the exercises we did in the workshop was to put ourselves in the paws/claws/hooves of an animal companion and look at ourselves from their perspective and experience. What do they see? What do they feel? What do they wish from and for us? *I invite you to try this on your own. Truly allow yourself to be open to the insights you receive. Do they see a happy loving person who engages authentically with them and others? Do they see someone who is angry and aggressive, someone who is scary to be around? Are you respectful and trustworthy to them and others? Do you consistently provide fresh water, good food, interesting walks and other stimulation?

For the most part, we have chosen to have our animals live with us in our world. So the responsibility rests on us to make that a positive experience for them. But I also believe that who that animal is and when they join us on our life journey isn’t totally random.

I have a friend who is struggling a lot with her dog’s [mis]behaviour and she is getting increasingly frustrated and angry with him. She acknowledges that her rage is really not about her dog but still he bears the brunt of it because he’s there and repeatedly triggers her anger. Regrettably they are in a perpetual cycle of extreme frustration, anger and unconnectedness. While the situation isn’t easy for either of them, and resolution seems to be far-removed, I believe he is in her life to help her confront this demon (none of her previous animals were strong enough to stand in the face of it).

I think that if she would step inside her dog for a bit to see and feel what he does, she would be able to find her way forward in a way that she never envisioned. She would realize he loves her so much that he is willing to stay on this tumultuous journey with her. His courage and tenacity would surely inspire her. He is calling out for help in a way that she has been unable to. She would see that he has not, nor will not, abandon her in her darkest moments. She would see that he is her rock.

And in return, he wants a trustworthy and loving partner in her. Someone who looks out for him, provides for him in ways that he can’t for himself. Someone who makes life simpler, not harder. Someone who understands and loves him for who he really is and hopes to become.

And when it comes right down to it, isn’t that what we all want in our relationships – human and otherwise?

Submitted by Lucy Martin