Archive for March, 2012
What Is Your Passion?
Friday, March 30th, 2012
In a recent conversation with my partner, she asked me what my passion was. I told her it was traveling and writing. She said, “But what is your inner passion?” I found myself stumbling and babbling all sorts of ideas. None of the ideas felt like my one passion in life. Then I asked myself the question and when I listened from that perspective, I knew the answer: “Service.” My passion in life is service. It’s something I was taught by my parents and a gene I inherited. I told my partner, “I will always be of service, no matter what I do in life.”
It seemed my answer was so obvious that I began to search for another one. Sometimes what we are really passionate about is right in front of us – something we do daily or is a part of our essence. When you think about your essence, what do you bring to the world?
What is your one passion you share effortlessly?
May you live your passion each day in celebration with the world.
Mary Anne
And if you need assistance unearthing your passion, feel free to contact me to set up a coaching session. Live your passion!
Befriending Ourselves – Again
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
As we enter a new season here on the East Coast, I am reminded of all the new growth that is (always) possible. It’s a season of renewal and new life emerging from the earth. I catch myself in awe of the beauty of Spring and its bursting of colors. Perhaps because it seems earlier than usual, the trees and flowers look brighter. I find myself asking, “Was that magnolia always that pink?” And I have found myself befriending Spring. What or who else is there to befriend?
I want to emerge from the earth the way the flowers do – slowly, effortlessly, and with joy. To emerge, I must befriend myself. But how? In her book, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life, Dawna Markova speaks about personal renewal and living with purpose. She writes about entering the abyss and entering life with wholeheartedness. One of Markova’s paragraphs spoke powerfully to me:
So many of us are afraid of meeting ourselves, alone, without distraction. We have been taught to fashion an image of who we think we are supposed to be and show that to the world. Through the fear of knowing who we really are we sidestep our own destiny, which leaves us hungry in a famine of our own making. Each of us is here to give something that only we can offer, and when we avoid knowing ourselves, we end up living numb, passionless lives, disconnected from our soul’s true purpose. But when you have the courage to shape your life from the essence of who you are, you ignite, becoming truly alive. This requires letting go of everything that is inauthentic. But how can you know your truth unless you slow down, in your own quiet company?
How can I befriend myself like I am this Spring season?
Yours in friendship, Mary Anne
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}
Just Like the Flowers, You Too Are Ready to Bloom!
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
I have been noticing the amazing flowers and trees bursting all over the East Coast. As I began to look more at the flowers, I noticed varieties I have never seen before (or if I have, I had ignored their beauty). Looking deep into the colors, I wondered when the seeds were planted. I became curious about the depth of the roots. I noticed so many forms of life fully grown and came to realize that this is the ultimate trust in nature that exists. And just when you think you know when Spring is going to arrive, magnolias trees blossom in mid-March!
How am I like the flowers? Where do/did I plant seeds in the hope and trust that they will fully blossom? How far down are my roots and which ones will I allow to become unearthed in new and amazing ways?
Just like the flowers, I am ready to bloom. What is bursting through the earth in your world? Just like the flowers, you too are ready to bloom.
Mary Anne
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
I Let Go And…
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012
I let go and let kindness in…
I let go and I let love lead me…
I let go and I let joy flow through me…
I let go and I let brilliance teach me…
I let go and I let God/Spirit shine in me…
I let go and I let life show me…
I let go and I let peace connect me…
I let go and let stillness heal me…
I am yielding to letting go, to growing, and being. I am anchored in the letting go.
By letting go, I am activating unconditional love, which starts with me and expands out.
Peace, Mary Anne
What If the Hokey Pokey Is Really What It’s All About
Thursday, March 8th, 2012
What if the whole world played the hokey pokey? Imagine the whole world putting its right foot in, its right foot out, its right foot in and shaking all about. We do the hokey pokey and turn ourselves around. That’s what it’s all about.
What if we played fun games, laughed at ourselves, and connected with one another in unique and outrageous ways? Maybe the hokey pokey is really what life is all about.
Time to shake it all about – Go play! Mary Anne
Are You Ready to Explore Your Wild Cosmic Heart?
Wednesday, March 7th, 2012
Experience the exquisite and ecstatic energy of your heart that connects you to your authentic self. Using primarily classic meditations methods, shamanic journeying, guided visualizations, as well as other experiential practices, we will explore some important aspects of the heart. We will be drawing on the physical and energetic experiences as well as the inspiration of poetry and lore from various cultures, myths and spiritual traditions to awaken our untamed heart. Our week long retreat includes experiencing shamanic practices and other rituals to awaken and access our greatest source of power – our heart.
This special retreat will be held at Kalani Oceanside Retreat. Kalani is on the Big Island and is bordered by tropical jungle and the Pacific Ocean. Kalani Honua means harmony of heaven and earth and our retreat will allow you to experience this.
The retreat includes:
– exploring heart-centered practices …
Mahalo~
Mary Anne
Failure That Matters
Tuesday, March 6th, 2012
The author and entrepreneur Jonathan Fields recently posted a blog, Why Failure Must Be on the Table, which describes the experiences of failures as gateways to opportunities. He writes, “Entrepreneurship–or any process that seeks to evolve the status quo–requires you to regularly test commonly held limits and beliefs. The natural outcome of this is that sometimes you’re right, other times you’re wrong. Either way, you never know until you get out of your head and take action in the world.
The potential not just for failure, but failure that matters, failure you feel, must be on the table. If it’s not, then what you’re setting out to do is either so safe or so devoid of the potential for impact that success might allow you to check a box on a piece of paper, but beyond that, nobody’ll care. Including you.”
We must know that what we are embarking on has the capacity to fail and yet give us as entrepreneur’s incredible lessons to grow and stretch. It’s the learning process and taking the leap that distinguishes the success stories to the stories that never get told. At times, it may feel like ‘a leap of faith’ but it brings us closer to the edges of our dreams. We push ourselves and do it afraid, because not doing it is more painful – and we fail ourselves.
Fields adds in his blog, “So, yes, living, acting and deciding to move forward in the face of potential failure isn’t easy. Especially when it requires you to go all in. And especially later in your lifecycle when you’ve got more on the line. To risk success in art, in business, in love, in life is, indeed, a bit terrifying.
But really, what’s the alternative?”
What is the alternative? Take the risk – and be willing to leap into failure that matters.
Mary Anne