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In This Issue
It's spring in the northern hemisphere - a time of volatile transition and burgeoning life. If you're one who feels the fever I think you'll enjoy Spring Fever - The Power of Awakening. If your intimate relationship could use a little of the zest of spring, check out Feeling Frisky? Rekindling the Passion in Relationships. Even if you're not experiencing the spring seasonal change where you live, or if your turbulent spring has already settled into the calm of early summer, there is a similar energy of spring in our creative processes and projects. In this sense spring is the time of newness, of beginnings, of brainstorming - where there are all kinds of seed ideas sprouting but not yet the time for choosing just some of them to nurture. It is the time of new relationships where anything is possible. It is the time of instability and possibility, of stark contrasts and polarities, of simultaneous yes and no, of hurry up and wait. We all experience spring-ness when we embark on new adventures, new relationships, new projects.
Every Monday at noon Mountain time (11 am Pacific, 1 pm Central, 2 pm Eastern) my dear coaching colleague, Lynne Morrell, and I are live on BlogTalk Radio. You can find out more about our show at blogtalkradio.com. We invite conversation around various coaching topics like Sourcing Power, Keeping Your Inner Reservoir Full; Courting Desire, Knowing What You Want; Transforming Fear; The Dance of Relationship; Intuition, Letting the Universe Guide You; and more. As we bill ourselves, this is not life coaching 101. We want to talk about life's polarities or paradoxes in a radically honest, irreverent, and deeply compassionate way. Please join us live to listen and share your thoughts in the chat room or by calling us. Or you can listen to archived shows.
Feel free to send your spring fever stories, questions, comments and expressions of delight to Christine@hawkview.net. I'd love to hear from you. If you or your relationship would like a free sample coaching session, then please get in touch with me. If you enjoyed this newsletter, I'd be thrilled if you forwarded it to a friend. If someone has forwarded this issue to you, you can sign up for the newsletter and get it delivered to your mailbox automatically, just by visiting my site, and giving me your email information (which is only for my use in this newsletter). If you don't remember ever signing up for this - which could very well be the case as my newsletter rhythm is not all that regular - and we're no longer good dance partners, then you can follow the link at the bottom of the page to unsubscribe. © 2009, Christine Thomas |
Spring Fever -The Power of Awakening
Something stirs in me this time of the year. Something wild and restless, something too powerful to ignore, calls to me, like the moon calls the tides. This wildness awakens in me every spring. It's brought on by some quality of the light, by something in the shifting shadows, the taste of the wind, the smell of the soil, the caress of sun on long protected skin. I feel it in a catch in my breathing, in the way my heart beats and in the forgotten longings that bring themselves, once again, into the corners of my mind. The trickster rises within me, daring me to break all the rules, to run barefoot through the snowmelt. I hunger. I yearn. The wild in me stretches and awakens. For most of my life I have gone a little bit crazy in spring. The now familiar restlessness has worked its magic of transformation on my life with each new revolution on the spiral. Those of my loved ones who have weathered these awesome winds with me know their power just as I do. I used to do impulsive things like buy a new car or move or change my career at this time. I've runaway from and towards relationships, projects, passions. Dancing on the surface of the energy of the season I thrashed about, restlessly uncomfortable in my oversensitive skin. But now I greet the call of spring with open arms. Now I let myself fall in love with the Green Ones and the living Earth as she rouses. Now I joyfully greet the turbulence of this time, for I know it will call forth in me a renewed connection to Earth, Spirit and my own deepest longings. For those of you who also hear the wild drums of early spring I offer what I have learned. What has been called spring fever is, to my way of thinking, an innate response to the heart beat of the Earth. Like the other animals, plants, rivers, rocks, winds, and spirits, we feel the changes in the Earth as the season shifts. In our separation from Nature we have chosen to forget that these forces impact us at an energetic and cellular level. And just when we think we are too civilized to answer the call of the wild the fever comes upon us. There is so much grace for us in this time of full potential energy. If we stay with the restlessness and yearning, if we stay awake and engaged, we can witness the glory of Pachamama, Mother Earth, as she awakens and we can use the energy of the season to awaken to the dreams within us. Spring is a time of feeling our deep desires. Spring is all about desire. It is desire to live what is essential manifesting all around, in, and through us. Much of the feverish restlessness of spring stems from attempting to deny our desires. We deny our true desires when we either don't allow ourselves to even be aware of them or when we settle for unsatisfying superficial substitutes. If we have the courage to do so, we can let the force of desire of spring take us deep within ourselves, past the censor who tells us we can't possibly be/ have/ do what we want. We can let the power of the season awaken us to our deepest longings. We can let those dreams of singing professionally or building a straw-bale house or writing a screen-play or living our priestess selves surface. Surfacing is the first part of manifesting our dreams, our desires, and spring is the time for surfacing. Caught in the web of life awakening all around us, our old pacifiers - like food, busyness, sex, TV, buying things - no longer satisfy. Not knowing what we want is no longer acceptable. The status quo doesn't look so good. The energy stirring all around us just won't let us tread water - the current is way too swift. If we allow it, we can ride this energy into the depths of ourselves, sinking down, down and deep, into the Earth and into what is essential for us. As the sun warms and life awakens we can let our desires awaken in us, we can let what we want bubble up out of our depths. Just as in brainstorming, the trick is not to censor or think, but to allow what you want to surface. You don't have to fear or act on or commit to what you want. This is simply the time for your dreams to reveal themselves. Later you can decide which ones to nurture. For now you can simply allow the force of desire of the season to help you to know what you want. The emerging beauty of spring provides the perfect setting for using our senses as the instruments of desire they are. Through them we interface with the world around us. This is a time to taste the wind, to taste the energy rising, to taste the mystery stirring. It is the time to work our hands into the Earth, feeling her pulse through our sensitive fingertips. It's time to smell the dirt, the rocks, the snow melting, the dried plants as well as the green shoots, to feel passion in our entire being. It is the time for savoring this intense prolonged foreplay - of delight building on itself, loving itself. I have found that when I sensuously enjoy springtime, my restlessness shifts to delight and my yearnings are satisfied by the spirits all around me. By allowing desire to be present in us we can get out of the restrictive feedback loop of thinking that doesn't solve anything.This is not the time of solving. Later, when the Earth warms and your new found desires are more than mere stirrings, later the time will come for doing something with them. Now is the time of being - being alive, being in love with the Earth, being our true selves, being wild, being restless, being aware of our desires, being a witness and co-creator with the mystery. Spring entices us to embrace risk. I would not dress spring in pastel colors - those are way too tame for her. Spring is woven with an element of risk. Each emerging bud risks death along with life. This is still the time of the hard freeze, of life and death, of sharp edges. In this time we are aware of the risk that always accompanies desire, but for now desire rules, not fear that would attempt to keep us safe. This is a time of remembering our connection to the Earth. She invites us all year long to know our place in her grand design, but never as passionately as in the spring. There is delicious delight in simply noticing the wonder of spring. If we take the time to do so we can feel the courage of every new plant that pushes up through the soil to the light, the life force in every bud opening, the story in every new bird song. We can feel the energy surging in our blood just as it is in the swollen rivers. Not with our logical minds but with our instincts are we reminded of the powerful forces that act in and on us just as they do with All Our Relations. All it takes is curiosity. Just use all your senses to be aware of what is happening in Nature. Being on a treasure hunt for the Green Ones is one of my favorite spring games. Spending a little time each day on the look out for the pioneers, the hardy perennials and the winter annuals who come up first, is great fun. Each one of them has a story to tell, a dream to share. With each new green face I see I feel the easing of the hand of winter. I know now that the wheel is turning and life is returning. There is for me deep comfort and easy joy in watching the Green Ones emerge. You don't have to know their names, you just have to watch for them. Every day feels like a homecoming as I listen for the meadowlarks and look for the robins. In the watching and the waiting and the just being with the plants and animals around me, I find my restlessness takes on a different vibration. No longer just thrashing, I see the flow of life around me of which I am a part. This is also the time of daydreaming. We no longer have a choice - the dream-time yanks us into its magic whenever it can. Driving, doing dishes, cooking, sitting in meetings, doing our work - the dreams en-trance us. Like other magical times when the veil between the worlds thins, spring is such a time of fancy and imagination. Allow yourself to play and dream. This is where you'll meet the divas and fairies, the ancestors and the generations to come. They all call to us in this time of shifting ground. This is a time of re-enchantment and of renewing our connection to spirit. Again, it takes little effort. In truth there is more effort required to deny the dream than to embrace it. Just play. Take some time each day to let your dreaming spirit roam.You know those pictures that look like meaningless patterns but if you shift your eyes a certain way you can see the 3D image of a dolphin or eagle in them? Spring is the time of year where the light shines just so and you can see the hidden spirit with just a tilt of your head. Spring is a time of hope. No matter what I didn't get done in the garden or around my home or in my life last year, I have another chance with this new growing season. It is a time of promises kept - warmth and new life are returning. I don't know yet what this season will bring but I know that it will be full of an abundance of new opportunities. What if our job is to celebrate the hope of spring into being? There are holy ones across the planet who pray the sun up each morning. (Where would we be without them?) What if spring fever is an alarm clock waking us up so we can do our work of witnessing, calling, dancing, and singing the new season into being? Spring can toss us about. All that new energy of possibility and life can really shake us up. At this wild time we may feel like abandoning the status quo, perhaps even walking away from habits or projects or relationships that used to mean a great deal to us. This can be very tricky, because in the roar of the whirlwind we might be inclined to leave behind something we really do want. Part of the wonder of spring is losing the established perspective - so we can make sure we are rooted in what has deep and vibrant meaning for us. Spring demands patience and compassion. The energy of spring is volatile and chaotic, sometimes gentle and hours later ferocious. This is a time of great extremes, of all kinds of polarities like get "out there now" and "not yet". It is a time of high energy with no place to go, a time of the full potential energy of water behind a dam. This roller coaster is best ridden wrapped in a blanket of compassion, held in securely with patience. Just as we now know the light has returned, we have survived the harshest of winter, we know that summer will follow. We know that the time will come for us to choose just some seeds to nurture and see to fruition, the time will come to flow with a more settled and focused energy in our lives, the time will come to enjoy the next phase of the creative process. Here is the challenge of spring and the fever: Just be with it. The secret I have learned for riding the rushing wave of spring is to just be with it. This is not yet the time for questions and answers, not yet the time for plans and action. This is not the time for thinking or analyzing. It is the time for being. It is the time for being with the restlessness, being with the yearning, being with our senses - open and alive to the magical unfolding. Being with allows us to vibrate with the energy of life all around us. It courts us to know ourselves more deeply. It offers a thrilling awareness of Earth and Spirit. It challenges us to own our innermost desires. It stirs our power to awaken. It demands we live our part of the dream. So, when your blood stirs, when the horizon calls, when you feel the need to run wild and howl at the moon - embrace it. This powerful season of awakening is calling you out to play. |
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