If you ask me...

I'm ready.

My destination has nothing and everything to do with you. Nothing because I choose. Everything because you choose too. Stars will align when they will. The want is enveloped within them.

Outer image has become fluid and character virtuous. Striving for deep reflection we look within ourselves, at times, pulling the energy of others all the while remaining internal. Growth becomes inevitable within new soil and the sun a necessity to prosper.

Blooms are most beautiful just before they open to the world. It is the delicate color that is shown responding to sun. The yearning towards the sky, towards the warmth that covers all sides, that invites the bud to stretch. I see it as clear as I did years past. One open bloom, ready to be chosen, another, just ready to bloom but not willing. A match in soil, nutrients, needs and environment requirements. Both feeling a genuine need for sol...

One cannot rush a bloom. Rain does come. Watering makes for rich soil. Feeding comes from within and from the Sun.

~Hasta Pronto.

♫ "And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight and closed in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom. This is the element of freedom" ~Alicia Keys

Cinder-Ella, Ella, Ella, Eh Eh Eh...

A damsel in distress she was. In her dress she was his princess. She was granted her dreams in bibbity-boppity-boo!

However, reality does not lend this as easily as animation projects. Everyone always depended on her umberella ella ella, but then proceeded to steal it instead. Her life was full of optimism and triumph and equanimity through all things. The story of a fictitious character somehow inspiring youngsters to hope for the same.

This hope is not false, but making truth from fairy tales is taking away from your experience. Living in the moment and appreciating the story that leads to your truth and destiny gives you ownership rather than control. It is not your story to tell or dictate, but you must instead be a willing character in the story of your life written by the ultimate Author.

So next time you once upon a time, make sure you listen instead of writing it how you want it to be, since the Final version may have an alternate and unexpected ending. Enjoy your story as it unfolds.



~Hasta Pronto.

Imitation of Life

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Hmmmm.

I believe that art imitates life. We began with life and our reference for creating comes from the living and from those living things that are around us which have inspired us to build art.

Life is trusting and tempting and anxiety provoking in order to push us towards realization of truth. Moving forward in such misty clouds of unknown take us to places that are at times beyond our reach but within our grasp. The mundane becomes a plan and the exciting, fleeting moments become an object for which we are to forever yearn.

These life happenings - the close, near and far are our life's water, our anchor in a sea of turbulence and what brings us to third level accomplishments and passions.

Level 3 - a divinely inspired number, once seen as incomplete and uneven, but known to all as a pair with a Guidance that binds and strengthens. This is indeed related to our goals and our representation as a piece of moving art, an ayah - a sign, as we are coupled with each desire as it comes our way and guided gently by the Leader that permits us to continue or shows us the way.

As we continue to embody life as we reflect its art, let us not forget who we are or where we come from, or we will indeed be lost.

~Hasta Pronto.

Looking for answers? Here they are...

"Be patient towards all that is unsolved in my heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer." From Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Inspiration for this writing comes from a place invoked by pain, merged after the departure of planes landing across an ocean and resulting in the evolution of a lasting friendship, from peace, from love, from truth.

Where are the answers you are looking for? Do they evade you, mesmerize you, sting you, make you laugh, seem elusive, are unwilling to surface, or just plain unwanted...? This, my people, we must decide for ourselves. We must realize that the answers we most seek and deserve may be within us from the start. Answers become surface level only when we decide to leave them behind and not mark them as a goal but as a journey.

The circle of life is living answered. Restless living leads to demise and a mind full of distraught. All the while devoid of mindfulness and overflowing with heedlessness. Oblivious to the outer world surrounding us with beauty and leading us closer to the truth. Or the harsher truf of what might not be pleasing to live. But we must push onward knowing the facts and accepting the dance. The to and fro of what can paint a symphony of notes with the human manifestation of rhythm and connection. Connection to one another and growth that leads to realization. That...that leads to answers.

It is no longer a request, but it is an invitation to live, to like...wait no, "Don't just like." Accept the invitation to love. To love uncertainty as you love black and white, to be attracted to gray as much as vivid color brings you joy, to miss confusion because it pushes you to look for clues, to love the question mark - the curves, the elongation, the signal of an end and punctuation, the period that indeed does close it out...the very sign that the answer is indeed in the question. Will you seek it out, will you welcome it, will you embrace it as it embraces your questions?

Say yes.

She Speaks

Trembling in a corner, the room is enveloped in darkness with the spotlight on red. Quivering forward, she steps into the light and clears her throat. She wonders if what she will say will be heard through the black of the space. She thinks she hears crickets giving their salute to the night, but instead she is hearing the rapidity of her trembling. She recites what is innate and gives her all to the audience she cannot see. The spotlight is hers but can those who hear her see her? She begins again. The first recitation was a mere rehearsal of inner thought. She speaks. Not sure what is flowing out of her she begins to feel the weight fall off as if she is released from the tension of the strings that bind her. She turns, focuses her attention to all sides of the room, hoping her frail voice will echo off the walls and back into her where those thoughts and feelings are safe. She second guesses herself when she hears no response, but realizes that she is still showing the room her skill through her performed prose. When she has finished there is silence again. No snaps, no applause, no approval, no rejection, no thrown off stage, just her, the spotlight, and the corner from which she orates. All the while trembling, but now, feeling a stillness inside. When the heart speaks, it expresses to manifest feeling into reality for itself and no one else.

Excavating --> Exposure

Dig. Dig Deep. Dig Deeper.

Picking up the shovel, which for some may be the most daunting task, is the first step. Clearing your schedule and making nothing know and disappearing into stillness is what you need next. Using the tools that God has given increase the speed at which you discover, but does not change the fragility that lies beneath.

Is this adventure unexplored? Have you started to uncover yourself and just when you see 'you' peeking out of the next layer of dirt, called away to accomplish another task in life? Did you begin to see what is hidden and complex, only to find that you were not ready to see the rest? Ask.

Discover that within yourself has shaped and defined who you are reflecting at yourself each morning. Find that comfort in seeing yourself clearly in and out of reality, with or without stability, having and not having comfort, feeling or not feeling love, learning or not learning truth.

You are perfect just the way you are. There is no need to change or alter your state. That is not your mandate. The you that you are supposed to be is ready. You have to be ready to be informed, ready to be great, ready to feel pain and love and happiness all at the same time. Ready indeed does mean willing, and willing to want to be you is your destiny.

If you are not ready for your destiny, realize that you are looking at a fertile pasture of untouched soil. Rich with longing for seeds of interest that bear fruit of awareness and healing.

So I charge you to dig, dig deep, dig deeper. Keep going and as the sweat rolls down your brow, keep thinking "I'm willing to meet my destiny because I'm ready to keep digging."

Perception is Everything, Perspective is Yours

A wise amigo once told me, "perceived loss is merely the precursor to victory..." Let's take a moment and unpack this shall we?

To lose something, whether beloved, unattached or unwanted is to experience its absence. This explanation shows that it once filled a space that was open and ready. When you do not have space to fill there is no need or want. A perception of loss is determined by the realization of that reality in real life. Do you see this? Do you feel this?

There are moments in life where you feel you have given your all, and at times more than you should or more than you, in actuality, knew you were capable of giving. Categorize these things. Make real what your actions have indicated to you and to the beloved, unattached, or unwanted.

In sports play, there are times where the player seems to have given out physically from our perspective, however, it is their perception "I'm not done yet" "WE haven't won yet" that drives the mind to drive the body to the finish. Energy that comes from the mind telling the body what to do can only do this if the heart is truly in control. Let your heart win. Listen. Develop the perspective to drive others perceptions (yours too) to a level of endurance, push and victory.

Victory - not winning, but overcoming an obstacle or enemy, says Webster. This obstacle or enemy it seems, is only through perception. It becomes an obstacle when you can overcome it, an enemy if you have to fight yourself to get past it. What pushes against us or helps us push against ourselves always ends in victory. Always.

Results are often two fold. One can be victorious in finding what those very opposing forces are, and molding our perception to gain perspective and strengthen our inner motivation and convictions and decisions to push back and push away. Another can be pushing against ourselves, finding the will to want to become one who makes their perspective that of self control and self regulation that molds self improvement, and their perception of that loss in any form is inevitable and indeed anyway, brings victory.

You don't fail because you lose, you win. Because in losing, your perception changes. That change in perception just may be what you need to bring a positive perspective to your situation and how others perceive you.