The flight home

 

Beautiful rows of geese

 

Formation flying

 

follow the form

 

Riding in the crease  of wind

 

ridges and rivels from the pair of wings in front

 

Except…

 

Gusts erase the smoothly lined path

 

replaced and misplaced

 

the perfect order and sequence

 

now swirling clusters

 

swooping

 

turning

 

flowing through and around the unseen wake of fate

 

Gathering up and flying on

 

finding

 

wing to wing

 

and all the while,

 

me staring at a vast blue sky,

 

wondering how to go beyond avoiding,

 

and transcend

 

aloft

 

soaring.

 

Inspirational Cards

The box cover for my first deck of oracle cards – Inspirational Cards.

I just finished creating a deck of Inspirational Cards. I am a huge fan of card decks, like tarot or angel cards. I have an ever growing collection of them, to be honest. So it is only natural that at some point I would create my own deck.

I found a very cool printing company, moo.com, that easily lets you upload different images for business cards. The paper the cards are printed on is sustainable as are the card boxes, which further adds to the warm fuzzy factor! The cards are printed on paper sourced from sustainable forests and are elemental chlorine free and wood free. The card box is made from recycled pulp board. And so, I had an easy way of self-publishing my own cards.

The front and back of one of the cards. The card dimensions are 70mm x 28mm (2.75″ x 1.10″).

One hundred designs later, I have a prototype deck of cards of my own! All of the card content is my own original writing and design. The illustration for the box lid and the card back is an excerpt from an istock photo illustration designed by Victor Tongdee.

I am so completely thrilled by this process and I am so excited to share them with anyone else who might benefit from a little dose of inspiration. I find cards are a great way of accessing our intuition and the wisdom of our higher self. I have already found that these cards are just bang on, accurately hitting the intuitive mark. Happy!

One hundred cards with unique messages of heartfelt inspiration.

If you might be one of those people who are also a card deck collector, or are looking for an uplifting set of positive messages for your well-being, please contact me (geneva@lunaholistic.com) to place an order. I will be sending an order into the printer by November 19, 2012 to get cards delivered by early December to my home in Calgary, AB, Canada. The card decks are $30 CAD each. Email me if you have any questions or want more detail about the card content.

So excited to launch a new creative project!!!

Tiny Writing Windows

Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)

 

I have been playing hooky from posting. Deliberately so. There has been an expansion in other areas of my creative and professional life which has accompanied the ebb of blogging. A flow of creativity towards novel writing, setting up a new office space, writing and designing inspirational cards and just generally enjoying the glorious summer, have sprung from this brief break.

 

I took a writing class offered by SARK called Write it Now with SARK (WINS) Just phenomenal. The results with my writing and my life were amazing. I highly recommend it to anyone drawn to pen and paper (or fingers to keys).  The support from the community of fellow writers was wonderful. Plus the fact that you get to ask SARK questions and receive support directly from a pure laser beam of love.

 

I am writing my novel in gathered minutes I gleaned while waiting for my son at the playground or over a morning coffee. So far I have over 3000 words written all from little slivers of time that have become tiny windows into this creative journey I am on with my characters.

 

Lotus HKU 2011 (Photo credit: yuen_long)

 

The beauty of stepping back from the daily commitment of blogging has been as wonderful a process as the initial process of writing publicly daily. Ultimately both have been about side-stepping the inner critics which stall the flow of words and creative ideas. This is what I learned:

 

• Make friends with your inner saboteur;
• Fall in love with your own words;
• Open up to the flow of words and let yourself be surprised;
• Appreciation launches dreams, criticism crushes them;
• Be unfailingly devoted to the spirit of the work;
• Be willing to set aside your own need for approval to write that which wishes to be written;
• Give yourself permission to fail, spectacularly;
• Every work has an audience, honour your fans by keeping the pen moving;
• Write from the heart and write often;
•  Tiny pieces of time are profound moments of writing.

 

Harvest

Soft chirps and leaves rustling announce the presence of the harvest. All that was initiated has grown, bloomed and fruited. There is a sacred energy in this time. There is expansion, contraction, reflection.

Now that you have what you wanted, do you still want it? Or has the dazzling romp of the summer heat stirred new desires within you?

The blessings of this human existence is the ability to clearly focus and continually choose. Babies are born in every season and so are new creations. Harvest time is actually all the time, but the seasonal shift draws our minds to ponder only one edge of what is actually a great circle. The season turns and so do we.

Answering the creative call

When I sit to write I feel a curious sensation fill me. I have pondered how to describe this feeling for quite some time now. It is a combination of plunging into cold water and the weightless lift at the top of a roller coaster. There is a twin pull and push on my centre than is at once motionless, yet full of movement, full of power. This is all before words fill me, or even a topic. Some days I wait there, poised, waiting, full of this powerful feeling, yet with no clear direction.

This is likely why writing bursts and writing prompts and free writes are all so beneficial. These are all techniques to get the wheels moving, to cause flow in an otherwise still process. Although there is also great joy to be found sitting in this stillness, this moving/ not-moving place. Letting the impulse to write arrive, knock, and knock once more.

There is great trust in this process, that the creative process can become stronger by not writing, not creating, but by waiting. It is like a deeply drawn breath, nourishing and clarifying. The out breath is the creation set in motion, full and vibrant. Both energies are needed, yin and yang, just as listening is required to craft a conversation.

Sign posts

The tender leaves brushed golden by the sun
Float lazily in the warm wind. The wind the tugs them out of their reverie.
“AWAKE! The summer is not yet over. You have more living than harvest left in you!”, the sun jeers. “Some tired and lonely day you can choose again. But, now… now, you must open, thrive, time to be alive”.

So thrive, green, time to be seen.

Five minutes to change

Here is an amazing exercise that has just changed everything for me in the last few days:
• Set a timer for five minutes, once a day, for 50 days. During the five minutes write about what you want from the perspective of already having it. Allow yourself to daydream, let your imagination take you on a joy ride. Then after the 5 minutes are over, go about your day as normal.

It is astounding how much has shifted for me and I am only 6 days in. The full 50 days will be something amazing. Even more than the physical shifts that have occurred for me, I have a profound sense of well being coupled with impeccable timing.

Test this out in your life and let me know how it went.

In time within time

A

space

between

the pause

and then

the stop

the start

begin again.

Sunny days

There are times where everything in life just flows. There is ease and flow and a relaxed peace that envelops all activities. I find these magic times are not random, but they occur when I consciously decide that ‘things will be easy’ or ‘I am going to have fun today’. These small thoughts guide me into a day of focusing on the things that go well and smoothing the things that go not as well. An entire day made of tiny joyful thoughts makes one fantastic day.

I practiced tiny joyful thoughts today. What fun!

Be happy

I just finished watching the incredibly sad movie “The Pursuit of Happyness”. I know it is meant to be an uplifting story about a man who brings himself and his son through homelessness to prosperity, but most of the movie is … well… sad. Well acted and a great script and direction, to be sure, but it was emotional to watch.

The movie really sent one important point home to me, though now I’m not sure if the movie really says this or if it is what I took from it, abundance is a state of mind. Happiness is a state of mind, not a set of conditions to be fulfilled. The struggle and stress of living in poverty is one thing, but there is a huge difference between living in hope and living in despair. The difference between hope and despair has little to do with what is or has happened, it is all the perspective.

I am also struck with how fortunate most people are, and how little they are aware of the goodness all around them. I am immensely grateful for my abundance, not just monetarily, but also in education, and friendships, and family, and a loving partnership and a healthy happy son, and a safe dry roof over my head as it trickles rain outside. It reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw the other day “Get Rich Quick! Count your Blessings!”