Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
The Conscious Edge
Thursday, June 28th, 2012
In Pema Chodron’s book Start Where You Are, A Guide to Compassionate Living, she writes, 
“Affirmations are like screaming that you’re okay in order to overcome this whisper that you’re not. That’s a big contrast to actually uncovering the whisper, realizing that it’s passing memory, and moving closer to all those fears and all those edgy feelings that maybe you’re not okay. Well, no big deal. None of us is okay and all of us are fine. It’s not just one way. We are walking, talking paradoxes.”
{Photo taken by Mary Anne Flanagan}
What Is Your Filling Your Cup?
Monday, May 21st, 2012
What wakes you up?
What brings you joy?
What fills you up?
What fills your cup with goodness?
Notice if your cup is too full or too empty.
Be present to what fills your cup with love.
{Photo: Turkish Coffee – taken by Mary Anne Flanagan}
If We Listened…
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
If we listened to the rain drops, what would they say?
If we listened to the flowers, what would they say?
If we listened to our heart, what would our heart say?
{Photo taken by: Mary Anne Flanagan}
What Is Coloring Your World?
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
As I walk through the city, all I keep noticing are the many amazing flowers – bursting with color.
I have been listening to the question: What is coloring my world these days?
As I sit and listen to that question, I am curious: What is coloring your world?
{Photo by: Mary Anne Flanagan}
Opportunities of Spring
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012
Spring gives us the opportunity to recognize that we too go through endless cycles of gestation, birth, growth, death, and rebirth.
What opportunity will you explore this Spring?
Welcome to rebirthing.
Mary Anne
{Photo by: Mary Anne Flanagan
Greenwich, CT}
It’s Not the Answer – It’s the Question
Thursday, March 22nd, 2012
As I sat in meditation, I realized I wasn’t searching for an answer as much as I was searching for the question. It’s the question that arises that determines where my energy and attention goes. The questions that arose this morning were: What is the call of my heart? What is my breath bringing forward? There was no need to answer, but just to keep asking and asking and asking.
What is the divine question that keeps coming forward in your life and in your heart?
You are invited to place your hands on your heart for a few moments each day and listen – just listen. Reach into the infinite brilliance that is always available within. Focusing on your hand connecting with your heart, what divinely inspired question arises?
Feel your hands. Feel your heart. Open your hands. Open your heart.
Let your question show up and guide you. What is the question of your heart?
{Photo taken by Mary Anne Flanagan}
I Am Willing to Give Myself Space For…
Thursday, March 15th, 2012
Dawn Markova writes in her book, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life, about personal renewal and living with purpose. She invites us to look more closely at our lives, our hearts, and our choices. Markova invites readers to allow ourselves the space to be as we are.
There was particular excerpt from her book that really resonated with me:
I have come to this refuge because it is a safe place in which to tell the truth about what I feel. I am groping to understand what it might mean to truly love my life, to find out who I am beyond the economic necessities of being a mind-for-hire. I want to stop running from my own tiredness, from the fear that if I am not accomplishing something, I will disappear.
I need to recover a rhythm in my heart that moves my body first and my mind second, that allows my soul to catch up with me. I need to take a sacred pause, as if I were a sun-warmed rock in the center of a gushing river.
In essence, I need to come home to myself.
What are you coming home to inside yourself? What are you willing to make space for?
I am making space for stillness and coming home to freedom. And you?
Mary Anne
Listening to All the Senses
Friday, February 17th, 2012
I am the silence that listens.
I am the open field that sees.
I am the wind that hears.
I am the pulse that feels.
I am the air that tastes.
{Photo taken by Mary Anne Flanagan}
Hide-n-Seek: Do You Hide or Do You Seek?
Monday, February 6th, 2012
When you played the game hide-n-seek as a child, did you prefer to hide or to seek?
As an adult, are you hiding or seeking?
Hiders hide. Seekers seek.
And as my friend Clayton said to me, “Finders find.”
Mary Anne
What Is Your Focus for 2012?
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
As we enter a new year, let us declare our theme for 2012. I have declared 2012 to be the year of adventure and outrageous bliss! My word for 2012 is PUBLISHED.
I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. ~Joseph Campbell
What is your theme or focus for 2012? What are you declaring 2012 to be the year of?
MY 2012 MANTRA
Wherever I am, there is outrageous bliss.
I would love to hear your theme, focus or word for 2012!
{Photo taken by Mary Anne Flanagan on the Big Island, Hawaii}