The big thinker for today:

"We are born with a seed of selfhood that contains the spiritual DNA of our uniqueness - an encoded birthright knowledge of who we are, why we are here, and how we are related to others.”

But what happens if we lose our awareness of this seed, or even worse, if we had no awareness of it to begin with? If we do not tend it, do we kill it? Or does it merely go dormant, waiting for us to reestablish the conditions necessary for it to germinate.

I would hope that this seed of selfhood, the design of our very nature, is perennial – with the ability to weather the harshest winter of our soul and grow again stronger and more vital when the warm spring of possibility blows across our consciousness. That a glimpse of familiar leaves and stalks reminds us what is planted and allows us to imagine the scent and beauty of our inherent bloom.

It is an interesting thought considering the gardens of summer are dying off and the land is growing stark. Perhaps even rumination on this idea needs the quiet of fall and winter to truly take root and yield understanding.

Deep horticultural metaphors – self-indulgent musings or a yet untapped vein of insight??

Adding yet another layer to the speech conundrum...

Words are a heavy thing...they weigh you down. If birds talked, they couldn't fly.

"The question is not is there life after death but Is there life before death?"
- John Kabat-Zinn

Hmmmmm

Not all of the important changes in your life need to be dramatic, Hollywood-like moments of revelation. Having a major turning point or epiphany is nice, but it can be overrated. You don't need to make a splash to make a change.

True growth happens slowly ... so slowly that sometimes (like now) you might not even be aware of it. Look around today -- did you realize that right now, you're in one of the biggest transitional periods of your life? Let it unfold -- enjoy it.

This thought was provided courtesy of Astrology.com. Sound advice – especially in an era where even the smallest event is dipped in glitter and trotted out to the masses as a pivotal point in the history of man.
But is this really one of the biggest transitional periods of my life?
Perhaps (how scary is that!!)
There are times when I see glimmers of where I think I would like to be, shining through cracks in my usually muddled existence. Words or phrases ‘click”, coincidences - and yes, I know, there are no REAL coincidences, adopt a karmic sheen, the right message comes at the right time...

Lord knows that my dubious mental default setting assures me that I am stagnant, but I don’t think that that is true. Maybe “slowly” is slowly like the grass growing or an apple ripening – not visible to the naked eye. Maybe the time-lapse record of hindsight will reveal today to be a glorious streak in the sky of self-actualization. But if my pace is so languid that I can’t yet see my footprints in the soft earth, am I making progress?

An email I received today highlighted this quote:

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
You are the woman who'll decide where to go."
- Dr. Seuss

Believing that this is the right message at the right time, I have decided that I do in fact have confidence in my ability to decide where to go. Now I must choose a direction.

“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.”

- John W. Gardner
author of Excellence and Self-Renewal

So begins a public documentation of the journey to reveal my path to a place of purpose…