Going Within

“From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow.” – Aeschylus

Greetings to all, and I hope the last two months of summer were wonderful for everyone.

Wow, it has been quite a while since I sat down and wrote. What happened to me? I was simply living life. My sons and I took a trip to New Mexico and Colorado. We spent time with close friends, and time together with just the three of us. We watched for bears, hiked, visited places we loved and explored new ones. I worked my nonprofit-social work job and within that created two day-long presentations, brought a few projects from my mind into reality, all the while feeling blessed that within my work there is so much room for expression and creativity. 

We got the school year started, and last week at work I facilitated a retreat for a group of non-profit executive directors at a state park called Quartz Mountain. In preparing for those three days, I took of my usual professional hat, creating room to develop a presentation that enabled us to explore neuroplasticity; have fun, new experiences and bring what we learned personally to our jobs.
 
But I wasn't writing and it bothered me. I felt unusually silent. Yet, within my silence I was aware of a deep, inner stillness. I felt peace. I felt a quiet joy.
 
There is usually a reason when we feel we need to be quiet and go within. Often there is a seed - an idea, wisdom, or understanding- that is taking root.

I feel myself emerging from my quiet space, and am going to trust that from a small seed a mighty trunk may grow. As autumn approaches, stirring the mystical inside of me,  I am awaiting epiphanies.
 
Wishing Epiphanies for Us All,
 
Sheryl

Lenses of Our Own Creation

"Hot and cold, pain and pleasure. Come and go, come and go. Oh my dear one, manage to endure them." 

So says the Bhagavad Gita, and such is the reality of life on this earth; the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the good days and bad days. In this world of duality, we gain understanding of one end of the spectrum by experiencing the other.

For those that have already read Timeless Waters, you know it is a story about the realization and discovery of three different lifetimes; an experience I believe to be on offer to us all. As relevant and life expanding as that experience was, years later I realize that one of the greatest things I gained was a deeper understanding of the degree to which my perception shapes my experience.

That sounds like old information for most of us, yet so often we contribute to our own emotional dramas because of our perception of events and the meaning we place on them. Figuratively speaking, we see the world through specific lenses of our own creation.

Unfortunately, not only are many of us not aware of the specific lenses through we perceive the world, we may not even believe we have lenses at all! Until we can acknowledge that we do, we may find ourselves in a perpetual loop of "mis" perceptions. We will talk more about where the "glasses" we each wear originate, from our thoughts to the mystical, next month. But until then, begin to observe your experience and the emotions that come up for you most often for they are the key.

The hot and cold, the pleasure and pain will come and go as certain as the sun will rise and the wind will blow. But with the desire and commitment to examine the glasses through which we are viewing the world, the difficult times will likely be fewer and perhaps even a little easier to endure.

Blessings,
Sheryl

Look for Sheryl's workbook "You Hold the Key to You: Understanding Self and Your Incarnational Past" in 2013.

Message from the Author

Bless my dear friends who urged me to get this book out, because without the urging of the many in my life such as they, I may never have had the courage to put Timeless Waters in writing. So now that this page is in place, and a book is in final form, I need to do something with it. But what exactly?

That question causes me to go back in my memory to eight years ago when the story itself began to unfold. Many words describe that time: unbelievable, remarkable, exciting, challenging, difficult, and maybe a little toxic. But I knew it was significant. If someone so average as myself could have such an experience, anyone could!

So I took to task, in the midst of raising toddlers and running a non-profit, to writing about the experience. My reason? Evolution of consciousness is inevitable. The rate of that evolution may vary depending on the threads that are woven together to form the tapestry of our lives. But regardless of the nature of an individual's tapestry, the first step in evolution of consciousness is within one's self. That is what the book is really about.

I make no claims of a literary masterpiece, nor did I strive for it. What it is, however, is a small seed. If the ground of your mind and soul are fertile, you may find yourself on your own unique journey to a heightened awareness and understanding of Self. Therein you will find something wonderful--your own timeless waters.

Blessings,

Sheryl