Surround yourself with what you love and allow it to feed you.
                                                                                                           
A few years back, my husband and I had just finished replacing the old mailbox and post that sat out at the front of our yard gradually falling apart. It was no surprise that it looked much better. We painted the post grey and bought a dark green mailbox, so that it matched the grey of our Victorian farmhouse and the green of the shutters. I found myself looking for excuses to drive by the house or gaze out the window, just so I could admire the mailbox.
 
It reminds me of when I bought a new teakettle. I wanted one that looked old-fashioned to fit the look of our home. I wanted one without that annoying whistle that so many of the newer models have, and I wanted it to be stainless steel so I wouldn’t be scrubbing off its painted surface every time I cleaned it. I took the time to go to several stores and finally found the perfect tea kettle, stainless steel, no whistle, with a gracefully curved spout and shape. After I brought it home and placed it on the stove, I would walk through the kitchen, ostensibly on some other errand and glance casually at the stove. There sat the tea kettle, shining in the sun coming in our South facing windows, sitting ready for duty on the back burner. When I heated water for tea I would sit enthralled by the steam wafting up from the shiny spout in curling, white tendrils.
 
Lest you think I have several screws loose as I soliloquize about mail boxes and teapots, I believe there is a deeper meaning to the pleasure these bits and pieces of our lives give us. That is, these small pieces of our homes add up to become the whole, just as the small moments of our lives add up to become our whole life. They are in fact, a microcosm of the macrocosm, each bit being representative of the whole. Love invested in these bits and pieces is returned, over and over again whether those bits are a mailbox, a teapot or this moment right now in which we find ourselves.
 
How important is a mailbox or a teapot? How important is one moment of our lives? Is it worth putting the love, the focus and attention into this moment to make it the best it can be? This moment is fleeting, why bother? Because the love invested stays, though the moment passes by, and the love is harvested over and over.

​Love invested never stops giving back. 

​Photo by Emily Rudolph on Unsplash

Soul Doors will be taking a brief hiatus as I'll be traveling to Iceland on a spiritual journey.  Look for our next post on Tuesday, March 26th. See you then!

Welcome to the Soul Doors kitchen! Surprise! Creating in the kitchen is one of my favorite things to do. This is the first of what will be occasional recipe posts under the heading of Savory n' Sweet.  I hope you’ll enjoy these favorite recipes that feel to me like a natural fit in Savor the Sweetness.
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First some background. I love to bake! Mixing together a variety of dry and liquid ingredients, scooping or pouring the resulting batter into a pleasing shape, then placing it into the alchemical magic of a hot oven and watching it transform to a golden-domed, fragrant delight, is a never-ending source of inspiration to me. Even better is creating my own recipes based on the proper proportions of flours, leaveners, binders, sweeteners, and liquids. Best of all, is creating delicious, nutritious recipes, gluten-free, no refined sugars, high protein and lots of hidden vegetables!

I’ll share a little story. A number of years ago I received strong inner guidance that wheat was not good for me. Though I had no physical symptoms I reluctantly followed that guidance and discovered that the gluten-free breads and muffins available at the market were more like eating cardboard than bread. It was disheartening for a gal who adored her dense and flavorful home-baked whole grain bread. So, I set out to bake dense and flavorful whole grain gluten-free bread.

Many, many failures later I discovered a recipe on-line that I could recreate into the loaf of bread I had been craving. (I’ll share this recipe in a future post.) I was launched into the creative world of gluten-free flours and recipe tinkering. I never regretted giving up wheat because I had such fun researching, learning and experimenting, and I was delighted to find that the anxiety I’d carried around with me for most of my life disappeared. Apparently something in the wheat was causing me to feel anxious. Who knew?

Fast forward several years and I welcomed three grandchildren into my life. One grandchild in particular had numbers of food sensitivities as well as an aversion to eating meat, most vegetables and many fruits. If it didn’t look like bread, crackers or pasta, he wasn’t eating it. I was concerned for his protein intake, as well as the vitamins and minerals he should be getting from fruits and vegetables. Loving a baking challenge, I set out to create muffins (a form of food he would eat) that were high in protein, had vitamins and minerals from hidden vegetables, had no refined sugars and tasted sweet and delicious.  Easy right?
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Um, not so much. But lots of enjoyable experimentation later I hit upon a recipe that checks all the boxes. I’m delighted now to be able to share with you this recipe for Pumpkin Spice Muffins. 

When you feel gratitude, you are the closest to the natural state you were born to live in.”
Abraham - Hicks
 
How do we make inspired, guided choices in our lives in full alignment with our higher-selves? How best do we answer the questions in our lives, big and small?
​
These are the questions I have been asking myself for several days now. I wanted a specific formula, a structure to work with for asking and getting answers from my higher-self and from my spiritual support team.

I knew that it began with asking the question. I knew the next step was to take it into meditation and wait for the answer. This is where I bogged down. My mind would keep worrying at the question, even as I tried to meditate. I’d see a fleeting visual image and wonder, is that my answer? Then I’d bring myself back to quiet and have a thought about something unrelated. Maybe that’s my answer, I’d think, and so on. Letting go and allowing was hard work.

The answers are all there for us, accompanied by such LOVE. You have only to ask and allow. But how do we allow?

Today, I began again. I asked my question out loud to focus my subconscious on my intention. I closed my eyes and quieted my mind, thinking ‘allow.’

But, how do I allow? 

A feeling of deep gratitude filled me. Gratitude for the love of Spirit. Gratitude for the asking and the answering. Gratitude for connection. I breathed deeply of that feeling of gratitude and said internally, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Love filled me tingling right down my legs, tears filling my eyes. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Breathing in gratitude and love. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

I got it. Gratitude opens the door to allowing. Gratitude is the magic, the path opener. Gratitude opens the floodgates of inspiration.

Imagine if you will an enormous spiral, a vortex of loving energy with the tip surrounding your whole body, and the wider part extending high above your head stretching upward into the heavens. This is YOU, in alignment with your higher self.

As you allow, through gratitude, all that is your higher self, all the energy, knowledge, inspiration and guidance funnels downward to and through you, allowing you to live in clarity, inspired action and the daily joy of gratitude.

Gratitude opens the door to allowing and guidance because it raises your vibration, to the level where you are able to connect with the energy of your higher self and your spiritual support team. They cannot come down in energy to you, you must raise your energy to meet theirs to receive guidance and the answers to your questions. Your higher-self and your spiritual support team are as delighted to communicate with you as you are to communicate with them, but you must make yourself energetically available.

Your higher self and spiritual support team are always with you, offering support and guidance, but as much as we want answers when we are feeling sad, angry, hurt, depressed or any of the negative emotions, the energy with which we are vibrating when we are feeling that way closes the door to receiving communication from loving Spirit.
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We must raise our energy first, and one way to do that is through gratitude. Gratitude for even the simplest things is a place to start. Then work your way up from there. Gratitude tunes your radio dial to receive guidance from loving Spirit through your higher self.  


Photo by Jacob Morch on Unsplash window door

“One thing about trains: It doesn't matter where they're goin'. What matters is deciding to get on.”
The Polar Express, directed by Robert Zemeckis, book by Chris VanAllsburg

What inspires you today?
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I’ve felt inspired by the bright, blue sky this morning, the sun shining off new fallen snow. I’ve felt inspired by the woodstove, fire crackling warmly within. I’ve felt inspired to create Christmas decorations, hanging our wreath and stockings, putting up the little tree in our front hall.  I’ve felt inspired listening to Christmas music,  and that magical Christmas movie, The Polar Express.

Inspiration follows the energy of the day. It is not always linked to the same activities or ideas. It comes and goes on its own schedule. If we’re lucky we get on for the ride and are carried along delighting in the flow.

Can we do this intentionally? Like waiting at the train station for the train and leaping aboard as it comes rumbling, steaming and puffing to a stop just long enough for us to get on?

I think we can. I think we are meant to allow our lives to follow our inspiration, that small, shining gem hidden within the layers of the every day sameness. Magic is found within our inspiration.

The Christmas season is all about magic. The magic of the twinkling lights, the mystery of the presents under the tree, the Spirit of Christmas, the time of year when love and giving is the theme, and everywhere you look there are representations of magical beings, beautiful decorations and sparkling colors.

No matter what holidays you celebrate, the child within us longs for magic, the magic that is Spirit. Feeling and following our inspiration from within is our connection to that magic. That’s where the real magic is in this 3D world we live in. The magic lives within each one of us.

The train of your inspiration is stopping at your station. All aboard! 

Photo by Bill Anderson on Unsplash

 “Despite my extreme skepticism, practicing gratitude changed my life. It didn’t turn me into some happy-go-lucky person I was never meant to be (or, frankly, wanted to be). But I developed a fundamentally different way of thinking and moving through life, one in which I stopped taking for granted all the tiny good moments that were already part of it. I stopped looking for happiness out there and learned to find it right here.”
— Nataly Kogan
 
In this season of Thanksgiving how do you feel grateful when things in your life are going wrong? What if the people you love are suffering? What if you are upset about the environmental situation? What if things are not going well in your life? Your world? How then do you feel grateful?

The answer is in the understanding that how you feel is not about what is happening in your outside world. Though we are conditioned to believe that it is. Rather gratitude comes from the inside. It is a matter of where you choose to focus your attention.
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“Gratitude should not be just a reaction to getting what you want, but an all-the-time gratitude, the kind where you notice the little things and where you constantly look for the good even in unpleasant situations.”
— Marelisa Fabrega

Sometimes the best way to attain that state of gratitude is to focus not on what you are worried about but upon what is right in your world. You can feel grateful for the commonplace things, the things you usually take for granted. You can look for the silver lining within the clouds. As you do so you create alignment. There is nothing that is going on in your outside world that is not supported by your inner alignment.  

That is why gratitude is such a powerful spiritual tool.

Your Higher Self and Spirit know what you are worried about. Your Higher Self and Spirit know what are the best actions you can take to create healing, improvement, betterment of whatever the situation is. Your Higher Self and Spirit need your permission given through prayer, to intervene and set the spiritual ball of healing rolling.

As you release worry and focus upon what you are grateful for, you move back into alignment. As you do that you will be inspired into what will truly support the situations you are concerned about. From that centered place you will be able to connect with, hear and feel inspiration.

Gratitude is the tool that can move you from worried wheel spinning to inspired action. 


Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

“Be with me today Lord, guide and support me as I unwrap this gift you have given me. May the beginning, middle, end and all the minutes of this day be filled with gratitude and awareness of your loving presence. Speak to me constantly this day, Lord, that I may ever have you in my consciousness, that I may ever be open to your love.”

-Author Unknown
 
As I searched the internet, looking for quotes and stories that inspired me I was particularly delighted with the following story. Happiness is a choice, made minute by minute every day. It is an intention decided upon beforehand, and lived in the present. Happiness comes from the inside out, and this dear lady is a perfect example.
 
“The 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock, with her hair fashionably coifed and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.
 
Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window.
 
​"I love it," she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy. "Mrs. Jones, you haven't seen the room ....just wait."

"That doesn't have anything to do with it," she replied. "Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged, it's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it." It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or I can get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I'll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored away just for this time in my life.”
 
-Author Unknown 

Photo by Jixiao Huang on Unsplash

Lord
Let the details in life take my attention today
A warm mug of tea
The gentle grass under my feet
And the chance just to gather and eat
O Lord
Let the everyday pleasures ring out melodies in my heart
The smile of a friend
A warm comfy bed
The sunlight on the trees and walks in the park
O Lord
Let the more ordinary reveal its amazing delight
Clouds drifting by
Birds sweeping high
The sunset that transforms day into night
Lord
May these things inspire me to praise
And bring a clear moment of sight
Now I see how amazing the world truly is
And soak in Your goodness and light.
 
-www.lords-prayer-words.com
 
A cool, river of water splashed from the garden hose I held in my hand into the dark, plastic interior of the garbage can. I leaned in and scrubbed vigorously with my long-handled scrub brush and listened to the cars whizzing by on the street in front of my home.

I felt grateful. Grateful that I wasn’t rushing off somewhere on this perfect Fall morning. Grateful that I was outside, breathing air smelling fresh with early morning. Grateful that my bare feet tingled with the cool of the long, wet grass. Grateful that I had time for so lowly a chore, the kind of job that is generally put off in favor of more important things.

I wondered if the drivers of those cars envied me puttering in my yard. More likely, they felt grateful that they had somewhere to go and could put off chores like washing garbage cans indefinitely!

I hoped they felt grateful for what they were doing this morning.

Because it doesn't matter whether we are washing garbage cans or whizzing along in our cars, what matters is how we perceive what we are doing. It is how we feel about the things that we spend our time on that determines the experience we have, and gratitude is the game-changer.
 
Photo by Joel Overbeck on Unsplash

"Our souls crave the quality of sweetness for that is the taste of love."
-Author unknown 

Once upon a time there was a queen named Dulcie. Queen Dulcie lived in a grand palace. She had a maid servant, an upstairs maid and a downstairs maid. She even had three pastry chefs. You see Dulcie liked sweets. Maybe it was her name which means sweet.

Even though she had so much, Dulcie was not happy. But eating sweet things made Dulcie feel happy for a little while, and that was better than nothing. The trouble was eating sweets would not make her happy for long. 

Queen Dulcie subscribed to 10 different gourmet magazines specializing in pastries and sweets. These she would pour over, clipping pictures and recipes which she would hand to her maid servant who would give them to the upstairs maid, who would pass them on to the downstairs maid who would trot them down to the kitchens to be prepared immediately.

The Queen could have any sweet she desired but still she couldn’t feel happy for more than a short while. It got so that as she stuffed herself with penuche and praline frozen cream bombe alternating bites with strawberry-raspberry sugared tart, her mind was planning out the next smorgasbord of rainbow-hued desserts.

Queen Dulcie demanded more and more. She thought that if she could just find the perfect dessert that she would feel happy and stay happy, so she sat with her piles of magazines and flipped through one glorious, glossy page after another looking for the one dessert that would make her happy. She always thought that the next one would do it, but it never did.
    
Finally, sitting on the floor, surrounded by towering stacks of magazines and the empty, chocolate-streaked plate from her last chocolate chip-apricot torte, Dulcie gave up. Her maid servant came running in and tried to coax her to rummage once again through the pages to find another dessert. Dulcie only shook her head. Her maid servant grabbed a magazine, and opened it to a sumptuous looking towering confection and held it up before the Queen, looking at her hopefully. Dulcie turned her face away. The maid servant ran all the way down to the kitchens to have all three chefs bring their most delicious creations before the Queen. Dulcie closed her eyes and shooed them away with her hands.

For days Queen Dulcie just sat staring out the window. Her maid servant cared for her silently, even offering her a magazine once or twice. The Queen never moved. The pastry chefs lolled about the kitchens playing tiddlywinks and jacks and took long naps in the afternoons.

Then one morning as Dulcie looked out the window, the sparkling sun shining through the leaves of the trees outside called to her. She left her room to go into the garden. The air was filled with a beautiful, sweet scent and a warm breeze caressed her cheek. She took in a deep breath of the sweet air and felt a stirring in her heart. Queen Dulcie sat down on the sun-warmed stone bench in front of the water fountain, surrounded by flowering purple lilacs and fragrant white viburnum, sunny-yellow daffodils and gorgeous red and pink tulips. The sun felt warm on her face. She closed her eyes and savored the comforting feeling it gave her. She listened to the water trickling deliciously in the fountain and let its melody soothe her. She breathed deep and tasted the sweetness of the lilac and flowering viburnum all the way back in her throat. She opened her eyes and swallowed the deep reds and bright pinks and yellows of the masses of tulips and daffodils spread out at her feet. Queen Dulcie smiled.

Her maid servant saw her queen smile and rushed to the kitchens. The chef’s bustled about creating delicious desserts, and paraded them out to the garden to offer them to their queen.

Queen Dulcie looked up to see them approaching grandly across the lawn toward her, beautiful platters of desserts in their hands. She gazed upon their hopeful, flour-dusted faces. She savored the sweetness of having such devoted and caring people on her staff.
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Dulcie smiled at each one as they stopped in front of her and offered her their finest creations. One at a time the Queen tasted each delicious confection with a single bite. She closed her eyes that she might better focus on the delightful flavors, then put her spoon down and smiled. Dulcie was happy.

©Holly Hildreth 2018

Photo from Marie Antoinette directed by Sofia Coppola