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By:Gina Baker
The Art of Seeing the Sky – How to Find Freedom and Compassion
The most fundamental confusion we have is between clouds and skies. When we strive to obtain a specific object or circumstance, we are seeking after a cloud. Even if we find it, it will hold only for a moment – and then it tumbles and evolves, changing endlessly. That is the nature of clouds. When we strive to arrange all the elements of our lives to match our vision of happiness, we are seeking to find a tableau of clouds all put together just right. Finding such a painting is even more difficult than seeking after a single cloud, and…
Cranky Feedback
As a professional writer, counselor, and musician, I’ve received all kinds of feedback about my work. Most of the feedback I get is positive and supportive, and that’s part of the reason I continue to do what I do. But some of the feedback is, let’s just say, “cranky.” Cranky feedback is especially interesting to me, because I usually know where it’s coming from, and can see myself in it. I’ll explain. There was a time when I was quite unhappy, generally angry with life. During that period I felt it was my job to enlighten people about what I…
7 Lessons To Live Fully
1. Life is far too short to hold grudges. I've seen too many people lose precious time that could have been used to become closer to family members, all because of a petty disagreement. You should either come to a resolution, or simply agree to disagree. No grudge is worth holding on to. 2. It is also important to remember that in life, there are two main questions you must ask yourself: Were you able to bring joy to others? And, were you able to find joy yourself? If you can positively answer those two questions, then you can deem…
5 Daily Habits for a Bountiful Life
Here are five things to believe in for a bountiful life in the human community; five life habits that if considered daily, you can’t help enrich your existence. One: Truly listen. Look in the eyes of others and be in the moment. Wait to speak. Take in the words they offer and savor them before reacting. You might call this “the patience of thought.” You cannot honestly connect with another living thing if you are only considering your own response. Understand your fellow human and you will understand yourself. Two: Be kind. Consider your fellow human being’s experience, background, personal,…
You Are The Journey
What if we have had it all wrong? What if you are not on a journey and have never been? What if there is no end destination? What if one tiny shift in perception and attitude could lead to full radiance, illumination and brilliance? Here it is... You are not on a journey... YOU ARE THE JOURNEY. Have you bought into an idea that you are here to reach something, set goals, live out an agenda and attain status? Do you create intentions and repeat affirmations? Are you running forward, trying to escape the things that are behind you, aspiring…
How to Embrace Your Soul
We are inherently spiritual in nature and all connected at higher levels of consciousness. As spiritual beings, we operate on multiple levels of higher consciousness simultaneously, but our physical senses create the illusions of individuality and of only the physical universe existing. Because we are connected spiritually, in your interactions with others always keep in mind that superficial differences like skin color, race, religion and nationality are insignificant. When you acknowledge your deeper spiritual connections with others, your compassion and love for others and yourself will deepen. The reason we are connected to others spiritually is because consciousness is imbued…
3 Important Actions for an Awesome Life
You can have an awesome life no matter where you start; you just have to believe and do your part. No circumstance determines your result. It took me a long time to learn that, but now it’s as much a part of me as my DNA. Growing up in a physically and emotionally damaging environment, and spending the majority of my time alone, I arrived at adulthood a very lonely, socially inept, financially challenged person with low confidence and almost no professional or personal skills. The person I am today, after years of development, is a stark contrast to the…
Take Advantage of This Joyful Ride
Life is Mother Nature's most important gift. Life is the time provided to us by nature to pursue our dreams and goals and live it to the fullest. Life is an ongoing experience, where each one of us faces different situations and incidents that either make or break us. It's just a matter of the way you perceive things; it's your attitude towards the experiences that make your life a joyful ride. To me the difference between a successful and unsuccessful person is whether or not they are taking action instead of giving-up. If there is one thing I don't…
How To Be Held By The Earth
Spring has arrived, and I invite you to take some time in this magical season to truly connect with the Earth. You are the Earth. Your bones are made out of particles that were once a part of mountains. Your cells are surrounded and penetrated by the ocean. The breath that moves through you once moved through mighty cedar trees and baby pandas. And all the plants and herbs that you partake of come from a love affair with the sun! To connect with the Earth is to remember that you are a part of the mysterious and awesomely creative…
A Radical Approach to Healing Your Pain
A friend of mine is having a lot of back pain and she hasn’t been out of her house in days. She is hyperalert around her pain and is afraid to do anything. The pain has so affected her life that she told me if it doesn’t get better soon, she feels like “checking out.” I invited her to consider the possibility of opening to the healing of being with her pain rather than always resisting it. I explained that so often we amplify our physical pain through our resistance to it, not realizing that we create more pain by trying…
How to Open Possibility Through Creativity
When I was 25 I entertained on a cruise ship. People would embark stressed, but gradually begin to relax, laugh, be quiet, be rowdy, and revive romance. Wow! Two weeks later, as they disembarked, I’d hear them say “Well, that was fun, but we have to get back to the real world.” - as if being happy, engaged, and heartfelt was reserved for an “unreal” world! To really understand this, I needed to know more so, at 45, I went to university. What an amazing experience. Three Masters degrees later, my new knowledge began to blend with my life experience…
As Is, I’m Here
During a weekend recently three big challenges came up for me and and I used one of my favorite mantras over and over again, “As Is, I’m Here.” Saying “As Is” reminds you of the willingness to allow yourself to be exactly as you are in this moment. It invites you to let go of struggling with whatever is (your usual mode), so you can move into the place of healing that comes from allowing yourself to be exactly as you are. “I’m Here” reminds you to be keenly attentive to what is, in a way that invites your heart to be open to…
Milestones… or Memories?
I've observed a theme throughout life, as I reached adolescence and beyond. This "theme" or pattern probably begins in our 20s, and I've observed it happen time and again to people in their 30s, 40s and 50s. Though I have yet to personally hear of this experience from someone in their 60s or older, I am most positive it must occur to them, as well. I am pretty confident it has the potential to make its way into every stage of our life. So what is this pattern, exactly? It is... milestones. As we approach any new chapter - in particular, birthdays -…
Welcome Yourself Exactly As You Are
Welcoming means accepting yourself exactly as you are and also accepting life exactly as it unfolds. It is the ability to allow all of it, including all the parts of yourself and your life that you don’t like, and letting it all flow without getting hooked into the stories created by your mind. Welcoming is not trying to make your life any different than it is. Easier said than done, right? I know it's not always easy to welcome and accept life, especially your challenges, because you have been conditioned to continuously judge yourself and others. This is the inner voice…
How You can Find Healing that Lasts
How would your life change if you trusted that your challenges are a part of your journey home – back to yourself and back to Life – instead of feeling that your challenges are here because you have done something wrong or you are being punished or God fell asleep on the job? What would happen if your illness, your difficult relationship, your demanding boss, your compulsions, and maybe even your troublesome dog were showing up in your life to help you heal? The healing you long for comes when you discover how to play the warmer, warmer/colder, colder game. Remember that…
Stop Trying to Escape Your Life
The other day my friend told me her family goes on “adventures” not “vacations.” “Vacations,” she said, “makes it sound like we are vacating our life.” The concept struck me powerfully. How often are we vacating our lives? How often do we want to escape, to get away from our every day? It is all too common to believe we have to get through three hundred days of boredom, frustration, stress, and angst in order to have a few days where we vacate the normal and actually live! What if we didn’t need to vacate our lives? What if instead…
Allow Kindness to Heal Your Struggling Self
With the return of my son’s cancer, I have had lots of opportunities to be with fear and despair. Sharing this journey with my son has taken me to a deeper level of presence than I have ever known. My body has been a very dear friend throughout this fierce process, especially my belly and my breath. Whenever I am caught in the fear-based mind, sometimes all I can do is soften my belly and allow a deeper breath. The belly is one of the best biofeedback mechanisms we have. If it is tight, we are up in our…
How To Use The Mantra, “Just This Much”
If you watch your mind, you will see that it goes into the past or future all day long. It especially loves to go into the future and when it really gets activated, it moves from a whole different place. It will convince you that that you can’t do it right, or you can’t do it at all, or something bad is going to happen, and the thoughts go on and on. These thoughts are just not true because we don’t know what is going to happen. All we have is this present moment, but you can begin to see…
How to Honor Your Survival System
We all created a finely-crafted survival system to bury or numb our pain when we were young. We had to, as it was absolutely necessary for survival. Life was too scary, and we didn’t have the skills to meet ourselves in our hearts. Our survival system can include compulsions, such as drug and alcohol abuse, shopping, work, sex, the Internet, busyness, self-judgment, and chronic worry. I think about all of those years that I shut down the pain with food, drugs and alcohol. In one year alone, I gained 97 pounds. I would have died of the pain if I…
An Open Heart Heals
The willingness to meet whatever is showing up in our lives takes courage. Did you know that the root for the word courage means “of the heart”? It takes an open heart and deep compassion to see all of the conditioned stories in our heads that keep us separate from life. It takes courage to see them, love them and, under that gaze of compassion, allow them to evaporate like the summer fog when it is touched by the morning sun. I have been experiencing a lot of pain in my back and leg for quite some time now. …