Insights – Melannie Thomas

Archive for the ‘Health & Healing’ Category

“Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.”
Walter Anderson

Like many words used capture and express our feelings, ‘happiness’ means many things to many people. In general, it is considered a state of well-being. The following are some of my favorite poetic expressions of happiness. I invite you to ponder, to meditate upon them.

“Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.” Margaret Lee Runbeck

“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Abraham Lincoln

As the Spring Holy Season gets well underway, I look for moments that connect me to the numinous; to the stunning beauty that surrounds me as the earth awakens to springs’ green pallet.

One such lovely moment came to me in this simple but profound piece by Douglas Jerrold, “A man never so beautifully shows his own strength as when he respects another’s weakness.”

Sending the peace, beauty and glory of the Season to you and all yours!

There is great merit in poetic expression.  Life’s experience presented in rhyme and prose offers us concise and powerful images upon which to meditate.

To wit: this weeks word expressed poetically.  “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

~Anais Nin

An equinox marks a time of equal hours of light and dark in a day.  There are two per sun-calendar year.  Today is the Vernal or Spring Equinox.

To the ancients these cosmic cycles were of great importance.  The remains of great stone monoliths throughout the world  are testimony to the powerful significance of marking the four solar seasons.  Stonehenge in Europe and Chaco Canyon in the U.S. are good examples among many.  ‘Civilized man’ is seemingly not as dependent on these solar events to signal or initiate actions of planting and harvesting, of preparation for summer and winter.

Yet the precise patterns quartering the solar year gave rise to celebrations and rituals proper to each season; bringing tribes, clans, communities and families together at regular intervals and connecting them to the rhythms of their worlds, physically and spiritually.  Traditions that continue today in various forms the world over.

For me the Equinox marks the beginning of the Spring Holy Season; a time of renewal both physical and spiritual.  Wishing each of you the joy and beauty of this Sacred Season.

I have it…UGH!  Catch up with you all next week.  Enjoy the rain.

My current ‘dream cycle’ is a very active one.  Mulling over a dream fragment from last night and, sychronistically beginning some prep work for a Dream Workshop coming up in April, gave me the inspiration for this word of the week.

Dream is both a noun and a verb.  Dream research demonstrates that everyone dreams.   Dreaming from a literal perspective is a valuable tool for understanding ourselves.  But there is more beyond the dream experience occurring in our sleep.  As applied to a dream job, partner, home or vacation, it means having (or hoping for) the ‘ideal’.

We also day-dream.  Spend time in a reverie or fantasy; we can also dream-up stories, profitably or not.  To dream is also to ‘imagine’.  I believe that day-dreaming combined with active imagination can spark ideas that can become reality.  A new profession, hobby, place to live, an invention, a recipe, a book topic, music, lyrics, and more can originate from this process.  But so like our sleeping dreams, we most often forget these inspired moments as quickly as we forget last night’s dream.

This week I invite you to a fresh look at your dream world…inside and out.

All humans want to know ‘why’?  Why this, why that, why me.  Beyond  social-economic, natural, and scientific realms is the why me.  Why am I here?  Why is this happening to me?

I believe everyone experiences and feels this question at some point in their lives.  We all want to have purpose, to live a life that matters in some way however small.  We have dreams, goals, plans and ideas about where we will go and what we will do…and then life happens.  Sometimes life happens in an awesome and sychronistic way and sometimes it comes as an unexpected thief, stealing our dreams, our loved ones, our homes, our health.  “Why” is our bewildered response.

It is these profound moments that create the opportunity to learn acceptance, adaptability, forgiveness and faith.  Sounds simple and even trite.  But to plunge (or be plunged) into the depths of our psycho-spiritual soul is more often than not a traumatic event.  It is working through the ensuing anguish, working through the why, that becomes an integral part of our journey to wholeness.

I recently overheard a familiar comment…’it’s not about the destination, it’s all about the journey.’  This brought to mind another saying about the ‘journey of a thousand miles beginning with the first step.’  My mind invited these concepts into play.  Soon I was riding the ferris wheel of my probing interest.  Going slowly round and round, stopping at the top; swinging gently.  Then down again, stopping to pick up some different perspectives.

Of course I checked the old Webster, journey has origins in ME, OFr. and L.  What intrigued me the most was the L. root, diurnus which means ‘daily’.  And also, that journey was a days travel.  This made a great deal of sense to me as I reflected on the above adages.  A days travel prior to the industrial revolution was an arduous undertaking, especially before the horse and buggy.  On foot, or on a donkey, horse, camel or elephant a day’s  journey would often have been demanding, exhausting and dangerous.

More mind musings spotlighted the ‘daily’ journey, with its ups and downs, highs and lows, flotsam and jetsam and provided a profound insight into the speed at which we now ‘travel’ in a day even when we don’t leave home.  This is not a new experience for the majority of us.  However, I wonder if you, like me, get so caught up in the swiftness of the journey that we often miss details; the Hawk on telephone wire, the color of the sky, the smell of the season, a stranger’s smile.

The above sayings now have more depth and meaning for me.  I am inspired to stop for a moment here and there; to catch my breath, to watch a Hummingbird, to play with a child, say ‘Hello’ to a neighbor, and to rest now and then.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.  It is a day that is often difficult for singles who have nothing going on romantically.  It is a day filled with flowers, chocolates, champagne, special meals, clothes, gifts, including jewelry, and greeting cards gushing and blushing expressions of love.

For those of you celebrating with that special someone in you life, I wish you a beautiful day!  And for those of you who are alone, I invite you to be your valentine.  It has been for me, a very enjoyable and rewarding experience to buy myself some of my favorite flowers, a bottle of my favorite champagne and to either get special take-out or prepare a special meal for myself.  Set the table, put on some great music, light a candle or two (or more) and savor some really good moments alone.

Wishing each of you a very Happy Valentine’s Day!!