Sparks in Wisdom's Fire: February 2022

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

sauntering with your body, mind, spirit, & heart

Let’s saunter — a slow meandering from here to wherever the paths calls. Who knows where a saunter might lead? You may be asking, what is a saunter? A saunter for Robert A. Johnson is “to walk on the earth with reverence for its holiness.”

As I read this quote, I smiled. To saunter is to live contemplatively. Being contemplative is living in alignment with the Spirit. Each moment is spent focusing our attention on however and wherever the sacred shines. Let’s see how we saunter through the four aspects of self: body, mind, heart, and spirit.

Sauntering with the Body

To saunter physically is to walk loose limbed. Putting one foot in front of the other. Roll from heel to toe placing all our weight on our forward foot before lifting the one in the back. Ongoing sauntering returns our center of balance to our core.

Walking like this raises awareness of where we hold tension and what is not in alignment in our physical body. Through sauntering we rediscover the rhythm of our connection to the sacred. This flowing movement reminds us that our body is a vessel of the sacred.

Sauntering with the Mind

Yes, we can saunter with your mind! Another word for this kind of sauntering is non-attachment. We attend to what is going on in our mind — words, images, noisiness — while not holding on to the dandelion fluff of reaction.

Sauntering is an engaged state of mind. It’s about not pushing away or holding onto our monologue. We watch as the fluff floats in our mind’s current. It lazily spins higher and higher, further and further away from our core. Through mindful sauntering we see the real in our life and live within that real.

Sauntering with the Heart

Our heart beats with emotions. Sauntering with our heart, we feel emotions poignantly, honestly, raw. Slipping into an emotion we feel it percolating; we are aware without judgment of our feelings.

Within the saunter, an emotion is what it is — no more, no less. We acknowledge, feel, and surrender into the emotion. This non-attachment is freeing. To saunter is to rest within the 90-seconds life span of emotion. Being with the emotion as it enters our body, travels through the nervous system, and exits. And, yes, that takes about 90-seconds when we don’t hold on to an emotion!

Sauntering with the Spirit

Our spirit saunter-twines through the other aspects of our being — body, mind, and heart. This twining of spirit makes us whole. Our spirit, our sacred spark, touches all four aspects making us aware of our wounds. It ignites our core fire sealing the cracks of our woundedness.

To spirit saunter is to connect our sacred spark to the All Spark. This connection threads through our being and then crosses our aura and saunter-twines with the energy of others and that of creation. In the spirit saunter, we recognize the sacred spark inherent in all.

This saunter with the spirit (small s and capital S) brings us to wholeness — body, mind, spirit, and heart. The cool part? The more we saunter, the more healing we bring to our self and the world.

Won’t you join me in the saunter? Be contemplative as you engage the whole of your life. You don’t have to accomplish all in this moment. To saunter, to live contemplative, happens one step at a time.

Van Hurst, ms, is an intuitive-coach-catalyst. As a contemplative coach, she uses mindfulness practices and intuition tools to create strategies for navigating the mundane and extraordinary. The result of time with Van? Creating a blueprint for your life through a deeper connection to your intuition and contemplative nature.

Van is a professional speaker & author who weaves inner wisdom into all she touches. Her books are available @ www.wildefyrpress.com. Her most recent book, As Natural As Breathing: Being Intuitive, is available on Amazon. Contact Vanessa for life coaching, intuitive consultations, keynotes, and programs.

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

listening in the cold

A cold wind seeps through the cracks of my being. A not so gentle “Wake up!” nudge. Sleepily I open my eyes to a chilly darkness. I feel cheated out of sleep…the day is not yet here! I cannot see the cold that grips me. I can feel its urgency — it won’t let me go back to sleep.

I shudder and shudder and shudder. Do I give into these shudders of fear? Shall I breathe deeply into the chill? Feeling daringly courageous, I choose the latter. I breathe in, welcoming the cold into my core. As it wraps me in its icy embrace, my curiosity rises. What will it tell me?

Bundled in a blanket of courage, I attempt to warm myself. To calm my fear shudders enough so that I may listen to the message whispering in the cold breeze. In those warming moments, I realize that the cold is not an enemy; the cold comes to bring me into new awareness.

Listen I do. Breathing in I draw the message deeper into my core. Breathing out I invite the cold to speak. Within the rhythm of the inhale-exhale, I calm. Soon I can hear the message whispering throughout my being. This hearing is not from my ears alone. No, I hear with my eyes, my tongue, my nose, my whole body.

I listen waiting to see how else the message will come to me. I listen not knowing if I will every truly understand all that my intuition brings. I know that I will at least understand a part of the message that wafts into my awareness.

My intuition is like that…slowly edging past the margins of my consciousness until I have not a choice but to listen. It demands my awareness. Intuition…inner wisdom…the voice of the sacred. Whatever you may call it, my inner voice calls me to be mindful of the many messages that seek my attention throughout the day.

Maybe I do not gain absolute clarity about the message. Maybe I am not ready to see the big picture. Knowing the entire message isn’t as important as deciphering the message bit by bit while trusting that I will respond exactly in the moment in the way that I need when intuition is my guide.

Deciphering intuition is not an exact science. It is more of an art that interlaces with science. My intuition is my friend; a life guide that leads me into greater understanding of my dharma, the lessons, the challenges, that bring me closer to myself. What is intuition to you?

Tuesday, February 8, 2022

All You Need Is Love

…a not so trite blog

What is love? Is it really all you need? I answered those questions — or at least asked the questions and discovered a few answers — as I developed my March Bellarmine University class: All You Need Is Love.

Love is…

Instead of love being affection or desire, let’s see love as allowing someone to be themself. Caring for someone unconditionally. Giving them the room, the opportunity to grow into themself. This is a paradigm shift in which love as unconditional takes on a whole new meaning.

At our core is a spark of love. The origin of our spark of love, is the creator, the sacred. That spark at our core flares a connection of love across the abyss to the Sacred, the All Spark as it were. When we ignite the spark at our core, a highway of connections is made visible — between our self, the sacred, others, and all of creation. Moving along this highway, we give and receive an infinite supply of love.

We need this love

The world is a wild, fierce, beautifully uncertain place where we get bombarded with so much stuff. We get fatigued. Sometimes the last thing we want to do is love — our self, another, creation. When we are at our lowest, we remember that love is an energizer. When we consciously and intentionally share love, hope blossoms. Barriers break down. Silos dismantle. We connect to others.

Love is the great transformer. Its energy ignites our forgiveness. It turns our attention to suffering. Wakens our compassionate heart. Shines the light into the shadows of possibility. Makes the world is a better place.

Love is a game changer

Love is not for the timid. It asks us to move out of our shell, beyond our comfort zone. To courageously live in a world that is not perfect. Not nirvana. Not heaven on earth. By igniting the spark of love, we fully engage life understanding that we are in a great classroom not of chosen lessons but of challenges and surprises that call us to be our best self. We show up as our best self by choosing love.

Each time we choose to be an igniter of love, a receptacle of love, a sharer of love, our perception shifts. We see past our judgments, into the heart of another, the heart of a situation, the heart of our self. We feel the woundedness of the world and know that the greatest healing power is love. When we see life in this way, when we act from this knowing, life is never the same.

Love propels our leap across the chasm

That chasm is just an illusion that separates us from our life work. That work? To share love with one another. Unconditionally, compassionately, truthfully. This is not the love of enabling but the love that holds each of us to our highest self. And, that is what we are called to do over and over again.

As I love dearly and completely, I realize that love is all there is. Wanna live a life where love is all there is? Wanna join the love squad? I dare you. I double dare you to join me in a world where love is all there is.

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Wanna be a walker between worlds?

Walk between the worlds

of the mundane and the sacred

of what is and what could be

of your intuition and distraction

of whenever, wherever, however

Walk between the worlds

knowing you are enough

The chaos, the uncertainty, of the last couple of years have spilled over into this year. The first month was a wild ride across the margins. It invited me to have one foot in the mundane and another in the extraordinary.

No matter where I found myself, each gallop provided different ways of seeing the world anew. Chaos and uncertainty aren’t necessarily “bad,” but the past month did call for awareness and its outgrowth, flexibility.

If you’re like me, I do not set resolutions. I have aspirations. I listen to my intuition as guide through the uncertainty. Through it, I decipher the messages, reflect upon them, and then respond to the world.

Don’t consider yourself intuitive? If not, maybe you have inner wisdom or hear whispers of the sacred within. Maybe you have epiphany moments or calm resolute. No matter what, I am sure that you have a voice that echoes through your being. That voice guides you on your walk between the worlds.

So, what are these worlds?

A world can be defined in many ways. When you walk between worlds, you are walking between two aspects of being: the mundane-ordinary and the sacred-extraordinary. These manifest in your personal life, professional life, relationships, in chaos, uncertainty, peace, calm. Walking between the worlds you are asked to show up as yourself no matter whenever, wherever, however you find yourself.

For me, that’s being contemplative while actively engaging in the world. Sometimes that is a leap! I show up as my contemplative spirit, sharing my compassion in moments that are uncertain and broken. Walking between the worlds I stand witness as a light of hope in a darkened world. As I walk between the worlds, I am never lost: my light is a beacon that calls me home to myself no matter where I am.

Walking between the worlds is about being aware.

No longer going through moments hurrying from one to another, I turn off the autopilot. I notice the unfolding moment for itself. I am in the rhythm of being present gliding from one moment to another. I am aware of how each moment calls to me. And how my intuition is the navigator through the margins as I balance the knowing I gain from each world.

Walking between the world means being who you are.

This trek through life is very different for each of us. How I experience my walk between worlds is probably different than how you experience it. For me, it is a weaving of the sacred-extraordinary into all that I do. On this jaunt, the extraordinary teases the mundane into becoming more.

My perception casts a kaleidoscopic light on the world. As a margin dweller, this new ways of perceiving empowers my unapologetic living from my own core. Standing in the spark of my truth, this balancing act while not quite easy, becomes a bit more harmonious.

Wanna be a walker between worlds?

Each of us has our own unique way of trekking. Maybe you are in the margins. Maybe you are smack dab in the middle. Most are somewhere in between. On this trek, you discover how you walk between the worlds. And, just when you figure out the navigation, I am betting you will be called to up your game. To walk between the worlds whenever, wherever, however you are called.

I’m walking between the world…wanna join me?