Bearing witness to the lessons of nature

I admit it: I’ve been a bit of a voyeur this past week. A friend sent me a link to Explore.org, where you can watch one of several webcams strategically placed for an unobstructed, secret view into nature. My productivity has suffered as a result of this find but my spiritual satisfaction has definitely improved.

The Brooks Falls Brown Bear & Salmon Cam allows us to peek into the hunting habits of bears in Katmai National Park in Alaska. It’s really quite incredible. For hours on end, these magnificent creatures wade into the cold water to grab a bite to eat. If you’re a nature lover, I highly recommend a look.

After hours of study, I’ve come to recognize specific bears, each with a unique identity and personality. It’s fun watching their hunting tactics: some sit on top of the falls, waiting for the spawning fish to jump up into their mouths while others prefer the deep recesses of the bottom falls, trying to dive in and catch a mouthful of the Alaskan delicacy.

There is something deeply spiritualistic and fulfilling watching this spectacular sight.

The bears are not encumbered with the same spiritual concerns that we are. They don’t create vision boards with pictures of tasty Salmon. They don’t create daily goals for how many fish to catch and I doubt they spend much time sitting quietly visualizing a successful hunt. I also have serious doubts that they spend even one minute of time examining their beliefs about attracting abundance into their lives.

Obviously, there are differences in the types of consciousness of humans and bears so we have different priorities. And I’m not bashing the very spiritual tools that I write about so frequently. Instead, I think there are some things we can learn from these furry creatures that apply to our own conscious creation efforts.

Expectation

Bears know where the Salmon are located. One look at the webcam and you’ll see exactly where the spawning fish jump up the falls. Once they get into the river, the bears know they’re in the right place. From there, they simply expect that they’ll catch a tasty morsel. They’re not thinking about what happens if they don’t catch any fish. They’re not concerned about whether their hunting methods are better or worse than their friends’.

Expectation is an extremely important and necessary component of conscious creation. Our expectations create the very reality we experience. So when we want to become deliberate creators, we must drop a lot of our preconceived ideas about life, the environment, and ourselves.

Instead of lack, we must expect abundance. Instead of failure, we must expect success. Instead of roadblocks, we must expect cooperation. It’s time to stop judging others and ourselves and time to turn our minds in the direction of the things we desire. It’s not easy to do, but it’s imperative that we learn this crucial lesson.

Expectation runs in the background of your mind, so it can be tricky to readjust it if necessary. Upbringing, past experiences and beliefs all contribute to your expectations so it’s important to first become consciously aware of your expectations and determine if they are serving you well or holding you back.

Patience

It’s hard to be patient when you’re hungry—just don’t tell the bears. Patience is another crucial ingredient in the conscious creation mix and it’s one of the most common reasons we don’t reach our goals. Impatience is a focus on lack, specifically on the lack of goal achievement.

In conscious creation terms, we become frustrated if something doesn’t manifest when we want it. And when we don’t get that treasured “something,” we feel like we’ve done something wrong. In absolute terms, we’ve stopped expecting that we’re going to receive what we desire and begin to doubt the process.

Expectation needs patience in order to work. A patient mindset tells the universe (and yourself) that you know you’re going to receive your desire. But when you introduce impatience into your reality, you’re telling the universe that you doubt it will deliver the goods. And thanks to the law of attraction, your new thoughts of doubt and lack will bring you more of the same.

Patience keeps your thoughts on par with your goal and allows the universe to set into motion all of the necessary ingredients that are needed to manifest that goal. Don’t get caught in the trap of becoming impatient. It will happen.

Impulses

Impulses come from deep in the psyche. They are the driving force behind our daily lives—urging us to action on anything from eating a sandwich to picking a different route home from work. Unfortunately, we’ve trained ourselves be distrustful our own impulses. We’ve come to rely primarily on the intellect to guide our actions and all too often we ignore the very basic and primal calling card of the inner self.

It’s hard to see on the webcam, but our bear friends rely on impulses, too. Watching the bears, I am fascinated by one sow in particular. She stands in a part of the river with fish jumping up straight in the air in front of her. With little effort, she can easily catch plenty of fish in a five-foot circle around her. Yet frequently, she stands up and moves to another part of the river that doesn’t look as active. Within moments, she’ll dunk her head under water and pull up a big catch.

In the animal kingdom, we refer to this as “instinct.” We label the bears’ ability to successfully hunt as an unconscious assimilation of evolution and intuitive know-how. Yet the bears are simply following their own impulses—a deep urge to move to another part of the river. They don’t second-guess those impulses—they act on them. Impulses are designed to lead you toward your greatest fulfillment, so learning to recognize and act on impulses takes you one step closer to successfully reaching your goals.

Living in the present moment

Have you ever absorbed yourself so fully in something that you lost track of time? If you have, then you’ve had a taste of living fully in the present moment. Living in present time doesn’t mean you need to stop and meditate, although it’s a nice, refreshing thing to do. It means giving your attention fully to the task at hand, whether you’re washing the dishes, paying your taxes or feeling at one with the universe.

Our bear friends are masters at this, hands down. Watch them and their attention to the hunt. For extra detail, pay close attention to the sea gulls that circle the bears while they hunt. The gulls gladly clean up any discarded pieces of fish and they frequently walk or fly within inches of the big furry creatures. Yet the bears are not distracted. They look intently into the river, placing their attention on the fish below, patiently waiting for the right time to act.

Enjoyment & Gratitude

In between meals, it’s not uncommon to see the bears playing on the riverbanks. Sometimes they’re splashing around in the shallow water, other times they’re rolling around playfully with each other. It really looks like they’re having fun and that’s an important takeaway.

Life is meant to be enjoyable. It’s the intellect and the ego that usually cause us to cease having fun. We become encumbered with too much thought. We get caught up in thoughts of the past or worries of the future and we miss the opportunity to have fun in the present moment.

When you set your intention to have fun no matter what you’re doing, you set up a vivacious environment for yourself and the universe. The world can’t help but respond with more things to enjoy—perhaps even more fun than what you’re doing right now.

Finally, an attitude of gratitude seals the deal on that wonderful environment you’re experiencing. Gratitude broadcasts a feeling of thankfulness, peacefulness and abundance that the universe then sends right back to you. Gratitude is a given for the bears; their contentment from a great day of fishing is natural. But when we as humans lose our own natural sense of gratitude, it’s important to take a moment and reconnect with it purposely.

For now, I’m grateful to this wonderful website for allowing me to watch these fuzzy creatures splashing around in the wilderness. It’s like Salmon for the soul.

Take your mind on vacation

Take your mind on a vacation

Have you ever taken one of those vacations where you feel like you become a new person? The kind where your body relaxes, your mind frees itself and you are, well, happier?

In those instances, you haven’t become a new person; instead, you have shed layers of egotistical crap from your psyche and become the person you really are. The vacation isn’t changing you per se, it’s allowing you to become who you really are. Yes, deep down inside you really are a happy and joyful person.

This thought came about as I walked down the street today, frantically running late to a meeting. Most of the people I passed were either hurriedly walking somewhere purposely or had their head buried in a smartphone. But one young woman stood out from everyone else. She was walking a bit slower than others, her posture was relaxed and I saw that she looked around her with a sense of wonder. As I passed her, she beamed out a warm, inviting smile at me that was impossible not to feel physically. I smiled back and instantly felt less stressed.

The scene reminded me of one of my favorite vacations in Hawai’i years ago. After dinner, a friend and I were walking one of the busiest streets in Honolulu near the marketplace where street vendors vie for the attention—and money—of tourists. But on this splendidly warm evening, everyone on the street was relaxed. Soft Hawaiian music played in the background and tourists languished on the street, taking in the sights and sounds of the tropical paradise.

That night I became aware of the friendly atmosphere of Hawai’i. No one was rushing to get anywhere. No one appeared angry. In fact, almost everyone we passed looked us in the eyes and smiled as they strolled down the street. We didn’t feel pressured to be anywhere or to do anything and in fact the biggest decision was where to stop and have a glass of wine. Sounds pretty nice, huh?

Family vacations notwithstanding, this kind of reaction is common when we go on holiday. We literally feel stress sink into the sand on some exotic beach, allow our troubles to float away while on a canoe in a mountain lake or let our enthusiasm rise in a crowded European marketplace. So why the hell can’t we do this at home?

We can.

During vacation, we purposely turn our attention and awareness in new directions. We notice our surroundings (which are generally new and exciting to the senses) and become emerged in the present moment. Most astonishingly, we feel that it’s okay to relax and quite proper to simply forget our problems for the time being. It’s a trick of the mind.

I’m not saying that vacations aren’t a wonderful thing. I’m certainly not saying that we shouldn’t allow ourselves the pleasure of going on vacation, quite the opposite in fact. I’m a big advocate for getting out of Dodge whenever possible.

I am, however, saying that it’s possible to bring vacation-type awareness back to the regular work-a-day world where it can really do us a lot of good. It starts with conscious choices of where we place our thoughts and emotions.

My interaction with the young woman on the street is a great example. Her smile and the subsequent reminder of vacation made me realize that I have a choice in how I approach each moment. So for the rest of the walk to my meeting, I slowed down and took note of my surroundings. I purposely felt the sun on my face and the slight breeze blowing around me. I made a point to look at everyone I passed and smile at them whether they noticed or not.

I remembered how great it felt to walk down the street in Honolulu and held that image and awareness for the rest of my walk. I wasn’t really on the island but my thoughts were and that allowed me to bring a piece of heaven back home to Colorado.

Bring the beach back with you (or the Eiffel Tower)

When you’re feeling stressed out, over burdened or just plain wiped out, try using some of these simple techniques to adjust your thinking:

• Stop and remind yourself that you have a choice in each moment. You can feel stressed out or you can allow yourself to feel calm. This is a hard one to do in certain situations, but give it a whirl.
• Immerse yourself in the present moment. Stop talking, slow your thoughts, and look carefully at the world around you. Take note of small details wherever you are—anything from the bright orange of a pencil on your desk to the coffee cup on the floor of the subway. Investigate with your eyes, your ears and your sense of touch, smell and taste. Engage your senses so that your mind can take a mini-vacation. Above all, breathe deep as you check out your surroundings.
• Refuse to worry. Even if it’s only for five minutes, tell yourself that you won’t worry and won’t concentrate on problems, challenges, negative people or unwanted shit. Give yourself a break. You can always pick up those thoughts in a while but for now, they’re banished.
• Change a pattern. Take a new way home from work. Put your pants on the opposite leg first. Order a cheeseburger if you normally get a chicken sandwich. The point here is to engage your mind from a different perspective, much like you’d have to do on a vacation in an unfamiliar place.
• Send your mind to the beach (or wherever makes you happy). Sit and close your eyes and remember one of your favorite vacations (or people or places). Remember as vividly as possible what you were doing, how you felt, what you wore, what it smelled like and what the temperature was. What did the ground feel like under your feet? Were you in the water? How did it feel against your skin? The trick here is to remember as much detail as possible (happy details!) and keep your mind engaged for several minutes to allow your nervous system to reset itself.

You don’t have to go to the beach to take a vacation. All you need is a purposeful intent, some creativity and a willingness to bring the beach home with you. Change your focus by pretending what it’s like to be on vacation—even if it’s in the middle of a busy day.

Aloha.

 

 

Easing into the spacious present

The spacious present is always only a thought away.

Daily living has a way of closing in on the human spirit. Work, chores, headlines, traffic—they all conspire to steal a precious commodity that belongs to each and every one of us. And while it’s easy to let the toils of day-to-day existence chip away at it, the spacious present can be brought back into existence with a mere change of thought.

The idea and the value of the “present” has been talked about in spiritual, religious and self-help books for many years. Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now is dedicated to the study of using the present moment as a springboard for understanding our very existence. But even after I read Tolle’s book (which is excellent, by the way), I was still left wondering, “what’s the big deal?”

It would take several years and many authors later for the idea to take root. I was reading a passage from Seth/Jane Robert’s The Early Sessions when Seth added the word “spacious” to “present” when I felt an immediate sense of understanding. Suddenly, I saw what all the fuss was about.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that easy for me to get the concept but it did start to gel in my mind. Perhaps it was this one tiny bit of information that really started to get the ball rolling: all of creation happens in the present moment. All of it. I had to let that sink in before I could really do anything with the concept. I tried to deny it and I tried to reason it away, but it just sat there, taunting me to think about it, study it, perceive it and then live it. Everything is happening now.

The only source of perception happens in the present moment. Think about it: you can’t think ahead to the future or think back to the past (really, you don’t). You use your consciousness in the present moment to do either of those tasks. Let that sink in for a moment. You use the present moment to experience your now, to imagine your future or think about your past. While you can mentally examine any “time” you’d like, you must do so with your feet planted firmly in the present moment. There is no other way.

What makes the ‘present’ so important?

The present moment is the stage where you produce your life. The actors you choose, the scenery you imagine, the actions you create, all happens right there, or rather, right “here.” The present moment is where you consciously, or often unconsciously, set the stage for what you will experience in your next moment, your next “now.” An understanding of that concept is important if you want to use conscious creation to your advantage.

Understanding that all of creation happens in this very moment underscores the need to be conscious of your thoughts, emotions, beliefs and imaginations…now. If you worry about the future, you do so from the present moment. If you opine about your past, you do so from the now. So either of those actions take on new significance when you realize you have a choice about how you think about them this very second.

What does “spacious” have to do with it?

When I first read Seth use the term “spacious present,” it brought the present moment alive for me. “Now” truly is wide open, vast and almost incomprehensible. Think for a moment about an astronaut looking down on Earth and freezing one moment of time. She would see over six billion people all “being” and “doing” and “living.” She would see rivers racing, oceans churning and mountains reaching for the sky. Billions upon billions of insects would be flying and crawling on Earth while uncountable animal life would be completing the circle.

Sounds pretty big, doesn’t it?

For me, getting a grasp on “spacious” in relation to the present moment is important because it helps to see and feel the enormity of what I experience. It also allows me to feel how much room I have to consciously direct my thoughts into what will be my next experienced moment.

Any attempt to sense the present moment brings me right back into it. That is, when I try to consciously perceive the present moment, it actually brings me right into real time—a moment where clock time doesn’t exist. When I add the layer of spaciousness to the present moment, it relaxes me and makes me feel energized at the same time.

Reality Challenge™

Attempting to sense the spacious present is an excellent way to ease into an awareness of yourself, your thoughts and your subjective mood. It stops the world for a moment, giving your mind a chance to catch its breath and luxuriate in the state of being.

Throughout the day, see if you can take a moment here and there to sense the spacious present. There are many ways to become aware of the present moment. Here are two of my favorites:

• Close your eyes and place your awareness on your breath. Breathe consciously and slowly in and out a few times then let your awareness flow to your body. Feel your legs on the chair or your feet on the ground. Loosen any tight muscles. Then allow your awareness to flow past yourself, into the world. Open your eyes: what do you see? Allow your eyes to move easily and slowly in your range of sight. Notice shapes, objects and colors. Listen carefully to what’s around you: birds chirping, cars passing, people talking. Listen for silence between sounds.
• You can also simply pause and allow your mind and body to sense the openness that surrounds you. This is a hard one to explain, but you’re trying to “feel” your way into the spacious present. Ease into it and let it envelope you. It almost feels like you’re allowing your body to vaporize and become part of the landscape. How far can your perception of the world take you?

While you’re sensing the spacious present

Once you’ve allowed your consciousness to slow down a bit and rest comfortably in the present moment, you can use that time to consciously create. Being truly present stops your thoughts long enough for you to become aware of them. Think to yourself: what do I want to happen next? How do I want to feel? What do I want to experience?

You don’t necessarily need to have a plan mapped out for yourself, but you can place positive and constructive thoughts and emotions in your spacious present that will meld with the universe to become manifest later on. For example, you can set your intention to feel calm and centered in the spacious present. Sitting (figuratively) with this feeling for even a moment will frame your spacious present and help you achieve that goal in the future.

You needn’t worry about trying to catch the spacious present constantly throughout the day. What you’re aiming for here is a periodic reminder of your present and using it as a springboard for intentional creation.

 

 

 

 

 

When nature demands to be seen.

Words and pictures can barely do justice for Nature’s display tonight.

The glory of the present moment can sometimes take you by surprise.

My friends like to tease me for all of the sunset pictures I take. Throughout the winter, the Colorado skies are pretty spectacular. Tonight was one of those nights and, of course, I had my camera at the ready.

Tonight, nature asserted herself through a surreal display of awesome colors, textures and emotions. So vast, so vibrant and so moving was tonight’s sunset, it demanded to be seen.

I was talking with a neighbor, returning from a walk with the dog, when we both looked up to the sky at the same time. His voice stopped mid-sentence. There was no longer a need for words. Together, we experienced nature fully, basking in its glory and living supremely in the present moment. That’s the power of nature–when it can stop you dead in your tracks, sit you down figuratively and show you how moving, special and inviting the present moment can be.

We forget about living in the present moment. There’s Christmas presents to buy, floors to vacuum and emails to send. So when nature affords us a chance to unplug from the grind and reconnect to source, we’d be fools not to stop and take notice.

There will be other stunning sunsets. I’ll continue to take pictures of them. But tonight, nature’s demands have been met. I’ve sipped at the cup of the present moment and my heart and soul are pleasantly full.

Don’t let the little things get you down

I knew better: never check a work email at 5:30 p.m. on a Friday after you’ve left the office.

Don’t check it especially if it’s from someone whom you know will cause your blood to boil. The email was from a coworker on a small project we had been working on for several months. I knew it would probably contain bad news but I couldn’t help myself and opened it anyway. True to form, in three sentences, I was belittled, insulted and turned down on a simple request.

Knowing there wasn’t much I could do, I tried to put the email out of my mind and I grabbed the dog to take a walk. Walking usually clears my head and makes me feel better, so I was eager to step out into fall air. But after several blocks, I realized I was caught in viscous thought-pattern. I was not only re-reading the email in my mind, I was thinking of all of the ways I could respond to it in writing, or in person, or in some other imaginary way. None of them were good.

Sometimes it’s helpful to allow your emotions full reign to allow them to leave your system. If I had left my thoughts after a few blocks, I would have been fine. But I realized after a mile of walking that I hadn’t even paid attention to where I was or where I was going. My ego and my thoughts were too embroiled in the email to let it go. That’s when I decided
 I had had enough.

I realized this woman was not worth my time and energy any longer. This issue was trivial and not worth getting upset over. Both of these were little things and they didn’t deserve any of the valuable real estate of my conscious thoughts. I had ruminated about the situation enough; now was the time to stop.

It wasn’t easy at first. I had to mentally force myself to think about other things. I took note of the color of the fall sky. I looked at the changing leaves of the trees. I knelt down and gave my dog a big hug and petted him for a few minutes. Every time my thoughts would drift back to the woman and the situation, I reminded myself that they were not going to ruin a perfectly good Friday evening. Little people and little issues don’t deserve to take up residence in my mind.

That’s the thing about learning and applying conscious creation–once you know better, you have plenty of opportunities to put new thoughts and actions into practice. It takes time to do this. When you accept the fact that you are in control of your life, you must be purposeful in your approach. You must be conscious enough and selective enough to determine where you put your mental focus.

By the end of my walk, I had forgotten about the email. I trained my thoughts away from it and onto more important matters, like thinking about the fun weekend ahead. When I did remember the email later in the weekend, it had lost its grip on my ego and my conscious thoughts and I was able to think about it without a lot of attached baggage.

Don’t let the little things get you down and don’t let the petty people around you dissuade you from your dreams. You’re bigger and smarter than that.

Reacting or responding?

Your choice to react or respond can affect your health and your spirit

There she was: one hell of a big brown bear. At least I assumed it was a ‘she’ since I didn’t want to be caught between her and any cubs that may be hanging around. She was busy gorging herself on some unseen bush about 15 feet in front of me and my dogs were enthralled with a ground squirrel that had just disappeared into the Earth. None saw the other.

In one of those ultra-calm moments, I slowly walked toward my dogs and attached their leashes to their collars. The entire time I kept my eyes on the big bear that was close enough to lurch toward me and tear me to shreds. Slowly I walked backward with the dogs, distracting them with a quiet pat on my legs. We walked slowly in reverse until I was sure we were out of view of the mama bear. Then, we took off. And by took off, I mean we ran full speed up the mountain toward my house. It’s a steep climb and one of my dogs was having a hard time with his arthritic legs, knees and the altitude. Still, we didn’t stop till we got home and locked inside. Then, the panic of the situation kicked in and I collapsed in relief on the porch.

This story jumped into my head this afternoon as I pondered a question from a reader on my Facebook page. Karl was responding to a post about living in the present moment and my advice to “react only to what you are seeing in your present experience and let the rest fade away.”

Karl’s question: “how about responding instead of reacting? Big difference.” It is a big difference, as long as you’re not splitting literary hairs. I immediately understood Karl’s question and felt the validity of his response. All too often we do react instead of respond to events in our lives and the variance can make a big change to our bodies and our spirits.

In my bear encounter above, I realized I responded before I reacted. Yes, I did do both and a look at the small differences between the two responses showed me how a slight change in mental and physical behavior can determine a completely different outcome. For me, that outcome meant safety, although you can substitute a number of different words: health, aliveness, survival, happiness.

Most of us spend a considerable amount of time reacting to life. We react to things we hear, see, experience and even react to things we imagine. Reacting is instinctual, automatic. Its primary job is to make the body move when the subconscious perceives threats. You react to a speeding car coming down the street. You react to the sound of a balloon popping. It allows our automatic nervous system to react on our behalf without having to think about it.

Responding is much more thoughtful, present and calculated. Responding is a choice. You get to choose a response. You get to choose NOT to respond. Responding is the result of the intellect and conscious mind making a decision to do, say or act in a particular way.

There’s a reason to know the difference between these two actions. Responding opens up options while reacting gives you limited choices. Learning to respond when you would normally react is a skill that gives some good payoffs. Look at my bear story, for example.

Since reacting is usually involuntary, I could have let my body take over at the first sight of the bear; that is, I could have reacted. Had that been the case, I may have made a lot of noise or quick sudden movements that could have alerted the bear to my presence. This in turn could have caused her to come after me, turn and run away, or alert the dogs to her presence, causing more problems. Instead, I chose to respond, calmly thinking through my options. I slowly got the dogs leashed and out of the way allowing us a smooth, easy escape. I did, however, react once I was out of view and ran like hell. Reacting first could have been fatal had there been a cub in the vicinity.

This is obviously a dramatic example of reacting versus responding. But we do this same thing every day when we live in our minds instead of the present moment. My guess is a lot of us do this frequently when we get an unexpected bill in the mail. Quickly, our minds turn to panic: how am I going to pay for this? Where is the money going to come from? What if I can’t pay the bill? These kinds of reactions force the body into fight or flight mode. We’re then filled with stress hormones since the physical body can only react in the present moment. If, instead, we choose to respond to that unexpected bill, we keep the stress hormones to a minimum and allow our conscious mind, intellect and inner self to look at other options.

Throughout the day our “future thoughts” and “past regret thoughts” can force our body into these same kinds of reactions. The result of this kind of reaction is an elevated level of stress hormones and unnecessary taxation of the body and mind.

Teaching yourself to respond rather than react takes practice—gentle practice. The easiest way to begin this change is to become aware of your thoughts. When you find yourself daydreaming or lost in thought, check-in with your body. Are you tense? Is your heart rate elevated? Is your mind beginning to race? If so, you’re emotionally reacting to your thoughts and it’s a clue to consciously shift your thoughts to a more positive and calming direction.

As you become aware of your thoughts and learn to shift them in a new direction, you can then move into situations that normally cause a reaction. You’ll need conscious discrimination here as you want to allow your body to react in situations where you need to react, i.e. when physical danger is present. But when you find yourself ready to haul off and scream at your co-worker for a stupid decision, you can catch yourself and consciously choose to respond.

In responding, it’s important to remember to honor your emotions. Yes, you may be angry with your coworker and that’s fine. You may even choose to yell at her for the mistake. But if you allow yourself that split second to bring conscious awareness to your own thoughts and feelings, you can direct your actions (speech, thought or otherwise) in a more positive outcome for both of you.

One small tip I’ve gleaned through practice is to bring my awareness back to my physical body when I feel like I’m beginning to react. When I become aware that my thoughts are going to take an idea and run with it (I’m going to scream at my co-worker), I try to find something to grab onto like a chair or doorframe. I then force myself to feel what’s in my hand: the cold steel of the frame or the fabric of the chair. Sometimes that little bit of sensation awareness can shift my mind out of reaction mode and buy myself some time to respond appropriately. It’s a small step, but it can help.

Taking those few moments and changing your response can help decrease your stress and open your mind to new options. Remember, if you don’t need to react in the present moment you can choose to respond or not. You have a choice.

This process takes discernment. It takes practice. And it takes a willingness to direct your thoughts and body into purposeful action. It seems like such a trivial point but the results can help take your consciously-created life in a new, positive direction.

 

 

 

 

Chasing rainbows

Okay, so I wasn’t chasing it but I was struck by how quickly rainbows can return us to the present moment. I saw this beauty for about three minutes as I drove out of the mountains and finally pulled off the road to admire it. The air was still and moist from the recent rain/snow mix that had just pulled through. The sun was warm and allowed me to concentrate on nothing but the beauty of the day before me.