April 6th, 2012
Are you open to more beauty?
Are you open to more love?
Are you open to more brilliance?
Are you open to more ideas?
Are you open to more joy?
Are you open to more laughter?
Are you open to more peace?
Are you open to more kinship?
Are you open to more stillness?
Are you open to more bliss?
Are you open to more and to more and to more?
Are you open to more YOU?
Mary Anne
{Photograph by Mary Anne Flanagan, Madison Park, NYC}
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}
April 3rd, 2012
I have never worried about my glass being half full or half empty.
I’m grateful for the water.
{Photo taken by: Mary Anne Flanagan}
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!
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
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}
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
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
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
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
