there can be only one

Ramirez in Highlander:

You have done well.
But it'll take time.
You are generations being born and dying.
You are at one with all living things.
Each man's thoughts and dreams are yours to know.
You have power beyond imagination.
Use it well, my friend.
Don't lose your head.

day 21/21: the source

Welcome to Day 21 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Source: the point at which something springs into being or from which it derives or is obtained; the point of origin, such as a spring, of a stream or river; one that causes, creates, or initiates; a maker.

rainbows, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

Connecting to our Source is, in many ways, about finding our way home. Our Source is the divine part of us, something we know naturally as children, but in most cases, separate from as we grow older. Yet many of us crave that connection but don't necessarily know what we crave or how to find it.

The Source for you may be something different to what it is for me. You may call it by a different name. You may have a different philosophy about it. I define my view of life by what feels right to me and what works for me.

You may call Source by the name of God or Soul or Divine. I think it has to be what resonates with you. For me Source, or the creative divine, as I like to call it, is my highest self. It's a part of the Whole - my whole and a universal whole where we're all connected. By connecting to my creative divine, something transformative happens. I cease to worry about all the worldly things that might normally concern me and tune into an energy or force that puts me in alignment with who I really am.

The journey home is the journey to self and who we really are. And sometimes we hide that so well!

It's a journey of small steps.

Lao-tzu:

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

It's about getting our ducks in a row more and more often until we reach a point where we're being who we really are more of the time. It's quite a journey and each of our journeys is unique to us. If you're reading this, chances are that you're already on your own journey.

I believe we all have a mission to fulfil in this lifetime. Part of connecting to Source is about remembering what that mission is. The more often we connect, the more we start understanding what we are here to do. Synchronicities also start to occur and signposts appear in our path. I think that the heart of the mission is about being the best we can be and who we really are. It's about not hiding your light or talent under a bushel.

I Ching:

It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events, by which the path to success may be recognised.

Part of connecting to Source is recognising the shadow side of ourselves, the bits of ourselves that we don't especially like and try to hide. To be whole we need to learn to accept these elements of our self and acknowledge them so that we can move forward. We don't have to deny them but look for the gifts that they bring us on our journey. The biggest hurdle is accepting the shadow side as a part of us. In the foreword of our book today, Neale Donald Walsch writes:

I believe in living a life of utter visibility. That means complete transparency. Nothing hidden, nothing denied. Not even the part of myself that I didn't want to look at, much less acknowledge. If you agree with me that visibility is the key to authenticity, and that authenticity is the doorway to your True Self, you will thank Debbie Ford from the depth of your being for this book. For it will lead you right to that doorway, beyond which is found lasting joy, inner peace and a place of self-love so vast, you will at last find the room to unconditionally love others.

The journey to Source is really about coming full circle. It's returning to where we began, to our origin. We just don't really know that when we're on our way. It's only when we arrive that we know. Because it's then that we recognise home.

Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Be inspired: The journey is my home by Julie Jordan Scott just said it all when I saw the post headline appear in my Twitter feed. The journey to Source is our journey home.

You might also enjoy The Journey Home.

Read: Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford was recommended as part of my Reiki Master course and was a book I used a lot over the following year. It has come uncomfortable truths in places but also gifts.

Do: Today is the last entry in 21 days. I hope that some of the posts have resonated with you and helped you on your own journey. If you wrote your intentions on day 1, take a look at them and see how they have manifested over the last three weeks. Also, consider what it means to you to be whole. What shadow elements of your self do you need to accept? I wish you much joy on your journey to your creative divine. Thank you for being a part of 21 days.

Jung:

Would you rather be whole or good?

day 20/21: creation and creative divine

Welcome to Day 20 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Creative: having the quality or power of creating; resulting from originality of thought, expression, etc.; imaginative: creative writing; originative; productive.

self portrait, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

What do you create? Even if you don't create in an obvious way by being an artist or a writer or a dancer, we all create in some way. We all express a creative side of us. You might blog. Or be a great make up artist. You might do collage. You might bake fabulous cakes. Think about how you manifest your creative streak and the things that you do to create.

And then think about why you do those things.

I generally like making things. I like crafty stuff, collage, nice stationery, journaling. I love discovering something new that I can try. My head is fairly creative too. I need time to distill ideas and cogitate but I can get in a flow and have to write furiously to get everything down on paper.

My main creative outlet is my photography. There's a kind of alchemy involved in photography. Converting something I see to a little image stored in a box. I understand the principles of photography but I still like to be wowed by the fact that a picture I saw in my head converts to a photograph on my screen. It's a bit like magic. One of the big things I love about digital photography is that I can come home after a photo session and download everything immediately, see what I took, see what really worked. No waiting! I practically rush home with my camera. I've often plugged in the cable between the camera and my laptop before I've taken my coat off. I still get a buzz from photography. There's always an element of surprise. Will the shot that you think really worked be as good as you hoped? Or will some apparently simple shot glow around the edges?

I often wonder why I take photographs instead of painting, for example. (I can't paint, apart from walls!). Why did I gravitate towards photography and not pottery?

My Dad was a keen photographer. He bought me my first little film camera. I used it for years. A tiny box that was just brilliant. It travelled to lots of places and took lovely photographs. Later I graduated to a better film camera. And then finally my first digital camera. It was a Fuji and quite big. I had enormous fun with that and discovered the immediacy of digital. Gradually I moved up the scale and finally bought my beloved Nikon. I often still take my compact digital out with me, when I just want a simple approach. But I love my Nikon with its zoom lens.

I subscribe to the Jane Bown style of photography. Camera and natural light. I often just take one lens (generally my zoom) and use the available light. I like to be unencumbered by lots of kit and flash guns.

But, why do I like photography best? In some respects it's a hard question to answer. Photography gives me a buzz. It makes me happy. I just love taking photographs. Photography lets me forget about everything else around me. But mostly, and it's a relatively late discovery, it connects me to my creative divine.

I had no idea what was happening for a long time. I knew when I was running around town taking photographs of events that there was a moment when something kicked in and I was on auto pilot. The more I experienced this, the more I could sense the moment when it happened. It was as though things ceased to exist, I moved on to a different plane. A kind of urgency took over.

I can't pinpoint the time when I started to piece together what was happening. It was probably a number of events. Reading different books, learning about the concepts of Theta waves, hearing people speak about source. Gradually a jigsaw was being put together and I started to see my photography in a new light.

The point where I switch over to auto pilot was the point where all my ducks were in a row. I was in alignment with who I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing. Photography was my form of meditation for connecting to my source, my real self and, as I like to call it, my creative divine.

In many respects it's not conventionally spiritual. It doesn't involve candles or silence. It doesn't involve acts of devotion. It involves total immersion in what I'm doing. 100% concentration on my camera. It frequently involves much mad running through side streets to get to where I know a photograph is unfolding. It's not really pretty or elegant! And yet it is spiritual. It's my kind of spiritual. It's about my spirit. It's about feeding my spirit in a way that brings me joy and fulfils me.

So, the question I want to ask today is what do you do that brings you the greatest joy?

Be inspired: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Flow. A TED Talk that was a synchronicitous discovery recently. Mihaly says:

... there are these seven conditions that seem to be there when a person is in flow. There's this focus that once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity, you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other, you get immediate feedback. You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger. And once those conditions are present, what you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake.

Read: Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I haven't read this one yet but it's on my wishlist and just the choice that came up today for this post. Flow and creative divine are inextricably linked so it seems like an appropriate recommendation.

Do: Ponder some of the questions asked in today's post. Why do you create in the way that you do? Why do you express your creativity in a particular way? How does it make you feel and what does your creativity bring to the world? Look for the ways in which you experience creative divine or flow through your creating.

day 19/21: play time (re-creation)

Welcome to Day 19 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Recreation: refreshment in body or mind, as after work, by some form of play, amusement, or relaxation; any form of play, amusement, or relaxation used for this purpose, as games, sports, or hobbies.

whit walk, originally uploaded by silverpink.

I love plays on words. The way you can tinker with them. Recreation means something you do in your spare time. Re-creation means something slightly different but encapsulates what recreation is all about. It’s the time to recreate yourself. A little like renaissance or rebirth. To stop, pause, take a break, play, do something new and, in the process, perhaps experience an a-ha moment. Suddenly something that you’ve been labouring over starts to make sense and fall into place.

It’s tempting to work work work. To keep going with something even when you’re exhausted and depleted. The sensible thing would be to stop, go and do something else, go and play for a while. But we don’t and I’m the world’s biggest culprit. I’m driven to finish something and I have to keep going until I’ve done that, even though often this is self-defeating and carrying on working makes the process longer and doesn’t add value.

Play connects us to our childlike qualities, those of imagination, possibility and fun. Children know instinctively how to go with the flow, how to get into the zone. They want to do the things they love to do.

What matters now is an ebook published by Seth Godin last year. It's a series of single page entries by a whole range of guest writers. I like it because you can dip in and just read a page, be inspired, check out the author's website and learn something new along the way.

One of the entries is written by Joichi Ito and is titled Neoteny. A new word. Meaning the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood. The piece challenges us to focus less on work, the serious, the constant striving to produce and more on play and how it can guide us away from rigid frameworks and dogma.

Another post is about Adventure. Written by Robyn Waters who suggests fabulous things to pursue in the name of adventure:

Blaze a new trail. Dare to discover. Have some fun! Pursue a road less traveled. Quest for truth. Take a risk. Unleash your curiosity.

Adventure requires childlike qualities to experience the awe of the new, the excitement of discovery.

Derek Sivers writes about Passion and in a few brief paragraphs lays out some important thoughts about what we might believe about passion and purpose:

If you think you haven't found your passion yet, you're probably expecting it to be overwhelming.

Instead, just notice what excites you and what scares you on a small moment-to-moment level.

If you find yourself glued to Photoshop, playing around for hours, dive in deeper. Maybe that's your new calling.

The message very clearly is to do what excites you. In other words, what brings you joy. What connects you to that part of yourself that links you to creative divine.

Gumption is not a word I hear every day. I think there was a cleaning product called Gumption once! Initiative; resourcefulness; courage; spunk; guts. J C Hutchins is the author of Gumption. He talks about how we settle. For less than what we really want. How we accept things when we should pursue something different. How we paint ourselves into corners. And how we've forgotten goals we wanted to achieve way back when.

Declare war on passivity. Hush the inner voice that insists you're over the hill, past your prime, unworthy of attaining those dreams. Disbelief is now the enemy, as is the notion of settling. Get hungry - hyena hungry. Get fired up. Find your backbone, and your wings.

Flap 'em. It's the only way you'll be able to fly.

Children can fly. They flap their arms and they're flying. As a child I had an imaginary horse. Somehow I got him to school every day in my Dad's car. I tethered him up in the playground on the railings by a pale blue door. At playtime a friend and I would ride our horses around the playground. At night we took them home again with us. I think mine slept in my bedroom.

Imagination is not dissimilar to visualisation. It's imagining how we would like our life to look. It's creating a picture in our heads of what we want so that the universe can go away and work on it for us, helping us to manifest what we want in our lives.

Play and imagination go together. Play engages a part of the brain that triggers our creative energy. You can't play if you're wondering how you look. Play is about having fun, being a little bit mischievous, taking a vacation from work and doing something that is far removed from being serious.

John Wayne:

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

Be inspired: Some ideas to bring our your inner child by Mirri Rocks.

Consider a retreat. I've signed up for Jennifer Louden's 2010 Virtual Retreat this month. Some time to step away from the work and spend some time resting and re-creating.

Read: Inspiration Sandwich by SARK. Lovely colourful, luscious books. Anything by SARK encourages our childlike qualities and for us to play. SARK has lots of inspiration on her website too.

Do: Look for opportunities to watch children playing. Think back to when you were a child and the activities that you loved. Recapture the feeling. I vividly remember a ball game played in my street with friends and parents. The light was fading but we didn't want to stop. What sort of things do you love to do and never really want to stop?

Robert Frost:

Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves.

an early christmas