Love, Mari
"We are all longing to go home to a place we feel we've never been - a place half-remembered and half-envisioned, that we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own unique access to (His) power. Community means strength that joins our strength, to do the work that needs to be done.Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of acceptance and healing. A circle of true and lasting friends. Someplace where we can be free and learn to take the light of freedom out into the rest of our lives." -- Starhawk
"Healers do not heal. Love heals. Healers are essentially lovers-those with the courage to live with an open heart-allowing love to work through them."~Linda White Dove~
Cultivate Heart Centered Presence- Beth Songer
I don't really consider myself a healer, but I am very grateful to be a witness and bridge to what we consider healing.I have studied many forms of healing and energy balancing modalities. It is something that I am interested in and I enjoy learning about. In fact, I have felt immensely blessed to have witnessed and held sacred space for some very profound healings. For me, there is no better gift that I can give myself than to be a bridge, a vessel for balance for another. In truth, that may be why all of us are here, to cultivate heart centered presence, love and total acceptance of who we truly are, by witnessing others and transmuting ourselves. For it is absolute truth, that when we suffer, everyone suffers. When we are joyful we elevate everyone and everything in joy. When a balance is corrected as healing, everyone and everything is positively effected" because we are all connected as One."
Note: I personally found so much wisdom in her words.
When Spiritual Life Really Begins
When your honeymoon with spirituality ends -- and it will end, marked by the arrival of STDs (spiritually-transmitted disappointments) -- and when your affair with being spiritually correct and spiritually in-style runs dry, you may say so long to spirituality, but it is a premature goodbye.Disillusionment with spirituality is not only inevitable but also necessary, so that spirituality might be thoroughly deglamorized. When that disillusionment has had its say -- cynicism's couch now being no more than a pain in the butt --and when your fear of re-entering the spiritual no longer frightens or disturbs you, your spiritual life really begins.
Most of the books will be gone; the ones that remain will feel like old friends you don't tire of revisiting, even if only a page or two every couple of months. Most of the practices will also be gone; the ones that remain will feel as natural to slip into as your favorite jeans or T-shirt, at ease with both being worn and being worn out. Most of your aspirations to be spiritual will also be gone; the few that remain will feel less like aspirations and more like unforced inhalations...
Whatever disciplines we take on will result not from one aspect of us dominating the rest, but rather from a core recognition of what is needed... Instead of being at war with our weaknesses, we bring them into our heart. Instead of trying to get rid of what we don't like about ourselves, we develop a better relationship to it. Intimacy thus becomes more our path than transcendence.
Seeking will become supplanted by living a deeper life. Questions will still arise, but will ask for something more real than answers. Alignment with the Real will become the ground rather than the goal. Details will cease being just details. Focusing on might be will yield to focusing on what's here now; that is, hope (nostalgia for the future) will be replaced by faith (radical trust in the now)...
Your longing to be fully awakened will still be present, minus the desperation and ambition that once characterized it. Where once you were in a hurry to get it, now you are not rushing or pushing, having accepted the fact that you are in it for the long haul. Then, even when you are off track, you are on track.
Life after spirituality is the beginning of authentic spirituality. No fireworks, no applause, no pats on the back from the Important, no need to present oneself as someone spiritual. This is the beginning of true nobody-ness. It is not annihilation, but revelation. It is at once bare yet sentient openness, and also the beginning of true individuality.
For every question that arises here, Silence is the answer. Put another way, everything supplies the answer. Nothing is explained, everything is revealed. Beyond knowledge, Wisdom; beyond paradox, Truth; beyond self, Being; beyond everything, everything...
Life after Spirituality is committed apprenticeship to What-Really-Matters. All that happens is the practicum. Every situation offers the same fundamental opportunity. The teacher is everywhere. There is no freedom from our Freedom. No escape. The implications of this froth then still the mind, awaken and release the body, ground and expose the soul, unraveling all our dreams, breaking us open to what we were born to do and be...
Life after spirituality is a constant dying. Emerging from our own ashes becomes no big deal, but just the way things are in each new moment....
-- Robert Augustus Masters
Upcoming Events
Reiki One and Two - Houston, February 27 and 28, 2010
Mari speaking at an Int'l Reiki Conference in Bogata, Columbia, April 1-4, 2010
One Energy Therapy and One Plus, Washington, DC, May 29-30, 2010
Reiki Master's Course in Tuscany, Italy, June 12-19th, 2010
Soul Food
"In everyone's life, at one time or another, our inner fire almost goes out. It is then miraculously burst back into flame by a powerful encounter with another human being.We should be thankful for those people who rekindle our inner spirit."
-- Albert Schweitzer
"Deep within each and every one of us glows a smoldering spiritual ember waiting to burst aflame, waiting for the spark to rekindle it, to allow us to fully experience our capacity and to fulfill our spiritual destiny."
-- Joel Padowitz
"Love is our true essence. Love knows no barriers of caste, religion, race and nationality.We are all beads strung on the same thread of love."
--Mata Amritanandamay Amma
"My deepest desire is to discover how to live life as a work of art,
rather than as a chaotic response to external events."
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.
-- The Talmud
In the middle of a storm, a pilgrim reaches an inn and the owner asks where he is going."I'm going to the mountains," he answers.
"Forget it," says the innkeeper,
"it's a risky climb, and the weather is awful."
"But I'm going up," answers the pilgrim, "if my heart gets there first,
it will be easy to follow it with my body."
A Must See, It is a special invitation.
Reiki Masters Course in Tuscany June 12-19, 2010
Love, Mari
