“Inspiration and manifestation on all levels are birthed in the present moment from your ‘I Am’, your ‘God Self.’” 
-Red Feather
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The present moment is your source of inspiration.

Suppose you have a job to do. It must be done. You’ve committed to getting it done. Now it’s time to do it and you feel uninspired. You’d rather be doing something else. You can feel the energy of inspiration around other projects, just not this one. How do you get inspired about doing this one?

You could just push your way through and get it done so that you can get on to what you’d really like to be doing. You could say to yourself, “As soon as I get this done, I can do this other thing that really inspires me.” It would be like eating your vegetables before you can have dessert. That’s one way to get the job done, and plenty of us work that way.

But where does inspiration live?

Red Feather says that inspiration comes from within, from our God self. Our God selves live in the present moment, right here, right now. Our God selves are not anticipating the future or worrying over the past. Our God selves are right here. This is where the magic happens. This is where inspiration lives, right in the heart of our God self.

Now, suppose you have a job to do, something you feel you have to get done. You have chosen to get it done now despite the fact that there are other things you’d rather be doing. It feels like work to you. Remember the saying, “It’s only work if you’d rather be doing something else,”? Well, right now you’d rather be doing something else, so it’s work. But you’ve chosen to get this done now.

So, do you push through and just get it done, focused on the product and on the doing of the job, wishing you were somewhere else? You can do that. If you do, you’ll be motivating yourself through fear or anger or some other emotion linked to your ego. Maybe you’re afraid that you won’t get paid. Maybe you’re afraid that if you don’t meet your commitments others will be disappointed, or you’ll be disappointed in yourself. Maybe you’re angry that you have to do this job, and that fuels your energy. However you motivate yourself from ego, it’s not likely to be enjoyable, but you’ll get the job done, even though it will feel like work.

Or, you can motivate yourself from your God self, with love. You can find your inspiration within your heart, opening yourself fully into this present moment.

Let’s take an example – Pretend we’re not in the middle of a stay-at-home social isolation order and you’re giving a dinner party tonight. You’re feeling stressed because the house needs to be cleaned, the table set and dinner cooked. You have an image in your mind of a clean, attractive, welcoming home, a delicious meal to offer your guests, and you as the relaxed and gracious host.

It’s a lot to live up to and not much time to make it happen. You’re feeling stressed about it. Your mind is bringing up images of the past when you felt disappointed in yourself for offering less than your best to your guests. Your fears are conjuring an image of future disappointment. Fear motivates you to rush through the cleaning, forget the decorations and barrel into cooking dinner as fear constricts your stomach. Not surprisingly, you don’t enjoy your dinner party much.

There is a more enjoyable way to approach this. You can get focused into the present moment where inspiration lives.

What would that look like? In this same example of the dinner party, the house still needs to be cleaned, table set, dinner cooked. Instead of launching yourself into a cleaning frenzy, you sit down, close your eyes, and take several, deep, calming breaths. Now, thank your Higher Self for opening the blossom of inspiration in your heart. Invite your Spiritual Support Team to guide and support you, that you may offer your guests a loving welcome, a clean, supportive environment, and a nurturing and delicious meal. Thank your Spiritual Support Team for giving you exactly what you need to accomplish this.

Next, you put on some upbeat music that sparks your energy. You gather together your cleaning materials, and while grooving to the music, you vacuum, wipe and wash. You feel energized as you enjoy the process, keeping your mind fully focused on what you are doing.

You’re not planning out the dinner as you clean, or worrying about getting it all done. If stressful thoughts come up, you mentally hand them over to your Spiritual Support Team and trust that you have exactly what you need.

You flow through the cleaning and on into the kitchen to start preparing the meal. You’re listening to music you love. Maybe you pour yourself a glass of wine or make a cup of tea to enjoy as you chop the vegetables. You feel relaxed. This is fun!

With dinner started, you turn your attention to setting the table, arranging the flowers and creating a beautiful, welcoming environment. Your guests arrive and you’re delighted by how much you enjoy the evening.

When you call on your Higher Self and your Spiritual Support Team and focus into the present moment, you are releasing the egoic fuel of fear and anger, and energizing your actions through love. That’s when what might feel like work turns into enjoyment because you feel inspired.

“Real peace and happiness can be experienced only when the pendulum of the mind stops swinging altogether. From that stillness, real peace and bliss ensue. This state of perfect stillness is verily the essence of life.”
-Mata Amritatnandamayi

Many of us struggle against unhappiness because unhappiness is uncomfortable. 

​Our minds tell us that if we can just do enough, be enough, have enough, then we will be happy. We constantly struggle to attain more of what we think we need, yet as Wayne Dyer says, “You can never get enough of what you don’t want.”

What this means is, what we think we want is not necessarily what we need for true happiness. The new car, new house, new romance, new job, new hobby, new exercise program, may feel good for a time, but no matter how many activities we do or how many things we have, it is never enough to create lasting happiness.

In our struggle to feel happy we energize the momentum of the pendulum in our minds. The pendulum swings back and forth from happiness to unhappiness, day by day, minute by minute. The seeking and struggle keep it in constant motion.

The Indian saint and great spiritual teacher, Mata Amritatnandamayi (Amma) speaks of stilling the pendulum of our mind. How do we attain the peace and bliss within that stillness?

We attain the stillness by wanting it, wanting it so much that we are willing to release the struggle against unhappiness. To do that we must also release the struggle for happiness.

What? Release the struggle for happiness?

Yes. The keyword here is ‘struggle.’ Release the struggle.

 “When something really, really, really matters to you, let it go! Say to the Universe: ‘You know what I want.’ Give it to me in the path of least resistance…”
- Abraham Hicks

The stillness lives deep underneath like the depths of the vast ocean. The waves and troughs of highs and lows roil about on the surface. As long as you stay at the surface trying to ride the highs of the waves, you are inevitably carried down into the troughs as well. Think of a surfer catching a wave at the top and riding from the height of the wave down to its bottom, only to have to return again to catch the next wave and ride it top to bottom. Over and over again the surfer rides top to bottom. When we constantly seek happiness, we inevitably ride the waves, top to bottom and back again.

While there is fun and excitement in riding the waves in the ocean, riding the waves of our emotions is a constant struggle to get back up to the top of the wave.  We try to fix unhappiness by having more, doing more, being more. We try to ensure happiness by struggling against unhappiness. We are constantly riding the waves of our emotions in an attempt to control what we cannot control.  

It is only in the depths where the stillness may be found. It is in the release of the struggle to keep our heads above emotional waters that we may encounter true peace.

When I was a child, I spent summers in a lake cottage with my grandparents. There we spent many hours each day swimming in the lake. My favorite thing was to be underwater. I would find a heavy rock and use it as a weight. Resting the rock in my lap, I could sit on the sand at the bottom. There I would feel the pressure of the ringing silence in my ears, surrounding me. It was so still and peaceful. It felt deeply restful.

As a child I understood the silence. As an adult I find I have to relearn the art of allowing myself the silence of my soul.

Are you allowing yourself the silence of your soul?

“Are you practicing the art of allowing or the art of disallowing? Are you practicing the art of allowing yourself to be in sync with who-you-really-are; the art of allowing yourself to be the true extension of Source Energy? That is who you were born to be.”
-Abraham-Hicks

​“Here comes the sun (doo doo doo doo). Here comes the sun, and I say, It's all right.
Little darling, it's been a long, cold, lonely winter. Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here.
Here comes the sun (doo doo doo doo) Here comes the sun, and I say, It's all right.”
-George Harrison, The Beatles

In the past my everyday life felt pushed or maybe I should say driven, because it was me doing the pushing. I was always thinking about what else needed to get done, who I needed to take care of, how to keep everyone happy, how this or that wasn’t good enough. It took conscious effort for me to relax, allow and appreciate what was. At the end of the day I’d look back over the day and think of all that I should have accomplished and didn’t, setting myself up for a driven tomorrow.

My life was motivated by fear. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of not having enough, time, money, parenting skills, you name it. Fear of not doing enough. It is not a comfortable way to live.

Fortunately, I’ve learned that there is a better way.

When I began doing sessions for clients, I learned to center and align myself before each session, calling in my Spiritual Support Team. I learned to trust the guidance I received. Trust the topics that came up for healing. Trust the words and tools that came to me to offer and trust the outcome of our work together.

On several sacred journeys to Brazil and to Iceland I was able to expand this into full days of trust.  I learned to trust what was in my present reality enough to fully relax into the moment. Trusting that who I was with, where I was, and what I was doing, was exactly right for that moment.

I stopped thinking that I needed to be with someone I wasn’t. I stopped thinking that I should be saying or doing something else other than what I was saying and doing. I learned to trust and be with what was.

It was like in my sessions but expanded outward into full, shining days.

Unfortunately for me, there was a big difference in how I felt when I was doing a session, when I was on a sacred journey, and my daily life at home.

That sense of relaxing and trusting what was, was missing.

Instead, I pushed to get through to the next activity or the next person to connect with. I drove myself to get everything right, make sure everything and everyone was taken care of.

Yet, I couldn’t help but think, wouldn’t it be wonderful to feel that relaxation, trust, contentment, inner peace, acceptance, allowing and joy throughout all of my days?

Now I know it is possible.

We can each of us do this through consciously intending it to be so.

We make the choice in each minute to consciously connect with our Source within. We breathe deeply, relax and allow ourselves to align, until it becomes our habit and we are living our days in love rather than fear.

What is needed to make this possible is a change in perspective. It looks like this.

The contentment comes from trusting that we are connected and guided and following that guidance. Knowing that something greater than ourselves holds the big picture.

The inner peace comes from knowing that we live in a beneficent Universe and that we are a beloved and essential part of that. No one else can express the part of the Creator that is uniquely you.

The relaxation comes from focusing in on what is in this present moment, and being fully present with whatever that is.

The joy comes through appreciation, gratitude and allowing yourself to experience the pleasure inherent in whatever is.

​It is this change in perspective that allows you and me to relax into what is. When that becomes our habit, it changes our lives. We shine like the sun.

“You must forgive those who hurt you, even if whatever they did to you is unforgivable in your mind. You will forgive them not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because you don’t want to suffer and hurt yourself every time you remember what they did to you. It doesn’t matter what others did to you, you are going to forgive them because you don’t want to feel sick all the time. Forgiveness is for your own mental healing. You will forgive because you feel compassion for yourself. Forgiveness is an act of self-love.”

- Don Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love- A Toltec Wisdom Book

Forgiveness is a gift, not just for those you forgive but for yourself. When you feel continuing anger, hatred, fear or any negative emotion for another person, even when it feels justified, it ties you to that person. It creates an energetic cord that binds you together, rather like a sticky, energetic web running from your solar plexus to theirs. The longer you have felt this way, the more negative thoughts you have thought about this person, the more energy you have invested in those negative feelings, the thicker and stronger the web, the more firmly you are bound to this person. What’s more, the cord stretching between you feeds that negativity right back to you.

Who wants that? Wouldn’t you rather be free of all that negativity? Gift yourself with forgiveness. In today’s Spiritual Toolbox is a simple visualization that can support you to free yourself through forgiveness.

If the negativity you have felt is deep-seated, meaning the negative thoughts keep returning and reattaching the cord, you may need additional support. Negative thought pathways can be more like highways than paths, if so, you may choose to bring in additional tools to support you in the forgiveness process.*

There are many available on-line if you search on “Tools for Forgiveness.” Also, check out our Resources page for the technique of Faster EFT-V, which can support you to release negative emotions and allow the process of forgiveness.

"Love is not a quantity it is a flow. When you allow love to flow through you, you are then in a place of love for self, then the choices you make are with compassion for yourself and what you create outside of yourself.  There is no need to do the push/pull. It doesn’t become a trade. There are no disappointments. When we are truly in a place of love and forgiveness we are in a continuous energy spiraling and evolving upward."

-Red Feather


​*We want to remind you to seek out professional support if your emotions feel too much to handle on your own.  

​Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

"My Love, leave behind all this fruitless thinking and come lay down here in the silence of Being."
​-Mooji Baba

As I sat outside on the back patio, my early morning mug of tea warming my hands, breathing and attempting to listen for God, my thoughts wandered down well-trod pathways.

The usual question came unbidden to my mind, “What is it that I need to get done today?” Images of weeds in the garden, unplanted daffodil bulbs, messy bathrooms, and my young, yellow Labrador needing exercise, wafted through my mind’s eye.

I felt resistance, not yet ready to leap into the tasks I had assigned myself for the day.  

Resting my hands holding the mug on my lap I leaned my head against the back of the mesh outdoor chair, my gaze wandering up into the branches of the oak tree above me. Black and white Chickadees and gray Titmice flitted from branch to branch, calling softly as the sky peaked through blue in the background. A breeze tickled the leaves and they responded with rustling laughter. I sank down inward feeling a sense of contentment.

A new question arose, “What is it that I need to BE today?” 
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Photo by Nick Bolton on Unsplash