2/25/01 - Sunday

Life-unfolding is an incredible site - beautiful and inspirational.  Great artwork and music.

Here's a quote I like that came from the site as I enjoyed it today:
"To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."
~~~ Henry David Thoreau

Especially because I opened a book from my shelf to reference and found a "Look to this day" bookmark and decided to put it into the blog.

from the Vedas:

THE DAWN OF TRUTH

Look to this very day, for it is life--
the very Life of Life itself.

In its brief course lies all the realities of your existence:
 the bliss of growth,
 the glory of action
 the splendor of achievemnet
 the ecstasy of love

Yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;

But today well-lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of victory.

Look well, therefore, to this very day!
....Such is the salutation to the Dawn of Truth.

For the new moon, I did an Oracle - I Ching reading.  I use the software here at home but you can get a free reading at the Visionary Networks site.  My hexagram was #43- Determination starting:  "Personal resolution points to a breakthrough, but decisive action is necessary."  This was right after I was thinking and writing about the Pluto station retrograde in March.  One of the workbook lessons/affirmations in A Course in Miracles Workbook is "I am determined to see "  (Lesson 20), followed by "I am determined to see differently" (Lesson 21).  This is the Truth I am hoping to perceive this year -- "...love to replace fear, laughter to replace tears, and abundance to replace loss." (Workbook p.88).  And the absolute knowledge that I and you are children of God, embodying the creative principle (Aham Brahmasmi, we affirm in Sanskrit at the Temple), "created to create the good, the beautiful and the holy."

Personal resolution and determination to see differently are challenged by the input of every day life around me.  I watch my thoughts and see a flow of negativity and fear.  My theory is that along with recognizing and releasing these inner fears and worries, I need to feed myself twice as much positivity as the negativity coming just from one day of TV, the news, and people who tell me how bad and sad life is.

I told my Inner Work for Self-Healing class to do this exercise this week:  Double your Joy!  Every time you find yourself enjoying something, whether it's your morning Cheerios or the sun shining through the window, don't turn it off.  Take another couple of moments to enjoy it.  We often spend more time dwelling on the negative and let go of the good stuff too soon.  Intensify the joy.  Enjoy the heck out of your life!
 

2/23/01 - Friday

Last night at the Writers Support Group the topic for our 15 minutes of free-writing was "Feet."  I wanted to get out of my head and into my feet.  Besides, the sun had just gone into Pisces and Pisces rules the feet.  John said, "This is too hard."  But he wrote a good piece.  Everyone had fun with it.  I felt that my assignments over the past few months had been too complicated.  I thought "feet" would be fairly simple and straightforward.  And sense-oriented.  You can't get too cerebral when you're writing about your feet.

I got the catalog from the University of Iowa writing festival this summer.  It looks good but maybe next summer.  I've already got the dates in my calendar for the Writers Institute in Madison in July.  I'm trying to talk more of the people in the Thursday night group into going.