Seven Guides for a Compassionate Life

In my book, Engaging Compassion Through Intent and Action, I share the importance I place on the Seven Gifts of the Spirit:

Once we learn about the gifts and our actions begin to reflect them, we are better able to discern whether our intent is sincere and actions are compassionate.  Not all of our intent is pure or our actions helpful. Through the seven gifts, we gain a contemplative perspective, which may be different than our current one.  When the two perspectives and the resulting actions differ, we have a choice: we can continue the hurtful behavior or we can trust the Spirit to guide us to a place of compassionate response.  As we make this choice, we may be guided by one gift in particular or several gifts at the same time.  It is through contemplation that we intuitively know which gifts we are called to use and how we can optimally incorporate the gifts into our lives.  (p. 78)

The Gifts of the Spirit are knowledge, understanding, wisdom, courage, right judgment, reverence, and wonder & awe.  Throughout the day I may question if I am missing a key piece of knowledge that will bring me to greater understanding.  Perhaps I need the courage to manifest my wisdom into right judgment.  When I see beyond the veil of the mundane and peer deeply into the extraordinary, my response is reverent and filled with wonder and awe.  Only when I live in awareness do these gifts invite me to take small steps across of the bridge of my compassionate being.

How are you being invited to cross that bridge?

Vanessa

www.intentandaction.com

The Alchemy of Intuition

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Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will.  This quote by Starhawk is an apt description of listening to our intuition.  When we accept an intuitive nudge, we change our consciousness and our world view.  We become intuitive alchemists committed to finding the extraordinary in the mundane.

When we see beyond the surface, the world becomes more than just routine.  Intuition manifests as we willingly suspend judgments and assumptions.  All of our senses come vibrantly alive.  We further nudge the door of the alchemical intuitive open.  Create an environment that is more conducive to intuition by:

• Setting a timer for 90 second
• Closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing
• Attending to your breathing…don’t try to shift it
• Resting in the quiet while being aware of the many sensations bombarding you while not reacting to them
• Noticing what you are called to notice 
• After 90 seconds, opening your eyes without expectation
• Allowing your attention to be drawn. What do you notice? What do your eyes light upon? What do you hear? Smell? Taste? Feel? 
• Noticing the message that is no longer hidden by life’s distractions

In this intuitive space you may

• Be reminded to call a friend
• Take a different route to your destination
• Feel compelled to engage in a certain activity
• Receive a message that manifests in many ways

How do you know if you have followed your intuition? Well, many times you do not. Intuition is a funny thing.  Often when we respond, we have no way of knowing why.  But, when we do not respond to intuition, we often realize why.  Many years ago I investigated child abuse and neglect.  One morning when I was out making home visits, a voice told me it was time to go home and work on reports.  I told myself I had one more visit to make and then I would go home.  I ignored the voice of intuition and was involved in a three-car accident.  When I think about intuition, I return to that moment when I didn’t listen.  And, now many years later, I find it easier to respond to the nudges instead of denying or ignoring them. 

May you listen to those nudges in every moment! 

Vanessa

www.intentandaction.com

Strengthening Our Foundational Consciousness

Our compassionate nature is strengthened within the foundation of consciousness, where we form our intentions.  By adopting a foundational consciousness built upon certain principles, our life begins to reflect our authentic being.  These principles are to cause no harm, to alleviate suffering, and to take life as it is.  The foundational consciousness we create is a sturdy base resting upon several pillars.  As we nurture our consciousness, the pillars grow deep roots into this awareness.  Our conscious intent triggers action through the pillars.  Through ever deepening awareness, we engage our role as a sharer of compassion to our self and for our families, co-workers, and members of our local, national, and global communities.  This foundational consciousness, supported by the life pillars, forms the base of our bridge of compassion.  As we cross the bridge, we live intentionally and begin to transform not only our self but also the world around us.

Foundational consciousness can be built with three simple agreements.  We agree to cause no harm, to alleviate suffering in our self and the world, and to accept life as it is.  When we agree to cause no harm, we are mindful how our words and actions are harmful or hurtful.  We also examine our thoughts to see how they create both spoken and unspoken harm.  The second agreement goes further. Choosing to alleviate suffering is the definition of compassion.  As with causing no harm, alleviating suffering begins within us.  Compassion, like love, begins in the home of our being.  If we cannot be compassionate toward our self, how can we hope to lessen others’ sufferings?  Finally, we agree to accept life as it is.  We are aware of what we can change and what we cannot.  We acknowledge that we learn from the many life challenges and lessons only when we accept life as it is.  We begin to share compassion when we embrace these agreements consciously and allow them to change our personal reality.

Being Present — Understanding Who We Are — Living with Curious Daring — Taking A Long Loving Look: These four pillars invite us into conscious, vibrant living.  They are interrelated; and only together do they provide true support for our life of compassion.  We only engage in awareness when we live with curious daring in the present moment.  As we take a long loving look at our self, we understand who we are and the many roles that we embrace in our life.  As we bring our foundational consciousness and awareness to our work with the pillars, we live our wonder-filled life and deepen our awareness of the awe that exists in our self, the Sacred, others, and all of creation.

Let's build our bridges! Vanessa

Excerpt from Introduction to Part One of Engaging Compassion Through Intent and Action

Learn more about building your bridge from intent to action @ www.intentandaction.com

Life As It Is

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When I think about life as it is, I am reminded of a saying that has been attributed to the mystic Julian of Norwich, “All will be well and, in the manner of all things, all will be well.”  At times life is messy, chaotic, and filled with what we do not desire.  We may attempt to hold tightly to our illusions and create a more palatable, if unrealistic, view of what life, our life, should be.  That creation is a fantasy, which supposedly fulfills our desires and wants.  Unfortunately it does not, because it is not real.

Chaos is inherent in life as it is.  Of course, within chaos lies possibility.  In our struggle to live life according to the illusion we hold to, we throw our life and authentic self out of balance.  Until we accept life as it is, we lack the springboard on which to launch a life that is all it can be.  All will be well when we align our personal experience of reality with life as it is. Only through this alignment will we discover what is beautiful, right, and life giving in our world.

Life is a wondrous roller-coaster ride that gives us both the greatest joy and the deepest despair, and every emotion in the between.  We experience life’s roller coaster only in the present moment.  We can only enjoy this ride and move in alignment with our authentic self by accepting the joys and the sorrows and the in-betweens for what they are.  This acceptance is the gate through which new possibility manifests.

Taking Life As It Is in the entrepreneurial spirit of curious daring,

Vanessa

From the book Engaging Compassion Through Intent and Action, pp. 37-38

To learn more about the book or purchase a copy, Intent And Action dot com

Coincidence or Miracle?

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Have you ever had a book passage, movie  quote, or song lyric just gets stuck in your head?  I have.  Finally banished from my consciousness, those words or image burrows deep into my unconscious mind only to surface at the most peculiar times.  Watching the movie Signs in a darkened basement filled with surround sound logically would imprint a memory of those almost silent, scary scrapes of the alien feet across wooden floor.  But, no.  What I remember is the quote from Graham Hess: See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?

It’s been a long time since I believed in coincidence. In fact, Albert Einstein’s saying: there are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle rings true to me.  I believe that every thing is a miracle and there are no coincidences.

When I am aware, I notice life's rhythm.  In this natural ebb and flow, nothing happens by chance or coincidence.  There is a simple beauty in the natural elegance of life.  Even when I am standing knee deep in the mud tending to my lotus blossom, I see the miracle within the moment.  And, with this knowing, I turn to the day with a smile upon my face. In my awareness I am poised to celebrate each miracle and each non-coincidence.  Within each lays the grace of being and the nudges of my intuition. With each I can meet the challenges and the lessons in the moment.

So, I ask you, “Which kind of person are you? Who do you desire to be?”

And, I wish that within the grace of each moment that you become your deepest desire.

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