Confession: I am Pinterest obsessed.

However, unlike many typical users that primarily file away recipes and DIY home improvement projects, I like to use it primarily as a tool for meditation. (In the interest of full disclosure, I also pin recipes and DIY home improvement projects because I can’t ignore salted carmel mocha brownies or reclaimed wood tables.)

It started around the time that I created this board of quotes. Words have always enchanted me. I have a masters degree in Interpersonal/Organization Communication and Rhetorical Theory because deconstructing our use of words thrills me.  Written, spoken, and body language are essential to our humanity and our divinity. They’re the many lenses through which we experience and express.

Since that first substantial board, a practice has emerged around pinning. As an air sign (Gemini), a chronic lucid dreamer, an energy worker, and a celestial warrior, many of my experiences happen through my soul in a reality far beyond this world. It’s easy for me to lift out of this life and feel dazed, out of touch, and ungrounded, like I’m trying to run forward while suspended still in mid-air.

I do a lot of grounding practices. I hug trees. I stand on the earth and dig my toes into the ground. I connect my energy to the earth’s core and let it draw my field back into my body. However, that doesn’t always resonate. And it’s not always practical, say during a blizzard or when I’m too ungrounded to even think about sitting quietly in a more traditional meditation. My senses are too heightened to simply reground.

That’s where Pinterest comes in. I have created boards that focus exclusively on forests and animals (and one just for horses). As fantasy-inspired as some of the images may be, they bring me back down into the smell of moss and the feeling of a horse’s velvet nose pressed against my neck. They offer a re-entry into my earth-bound body taking in and conversing with the physical world around me.

And then there are my reminder boards, for moments when I feel lost, despairing, hopeless or confused. I can turn to a board for my most essential self, a board for my yearly theme, or a board for my most profound desire. Each one awakens my truth, drawing me deeper into alignment with and awareness of my foundation.

Despite my best efforts, sometimes my view of this human experience darkens and I crave beauty. You know those times when you just want to stare in wonderment at something? In addition to an actual wonderment board, I also use this sacred geometry board and this crystalline board to steep my sight in beauty.

Sometimes the meditation practice is the action of pinning. Curation is a powerful use of the ability to choose. It’s a way to say a small, holy yes to what brings light to life. Other times the meditation practice is in gazing. Sometimes I’ll look at a single image or a series of images for 10 or 15 minutes, letting the beauty and magic of whatever I’m looking at wash over me again and again. As I look at a picture or drawing, I notice where it shifts my energy. I ask myself what feeling(s) it evokes and why it makes me feel calmer, lighter or stronger.

The best part of this practice? It starts with an app on my phone that goes with me almost everywhere. That means no matter where I am, I always have access to a tool that can call me home to myself when I feel far, far away.

What’s your favorite meditation tool or practice?

Full disclosure: As I sit here and witness these words appearing, I realize they’re just as much for me as they are for you.

Trust is a tiny, fierce creature, always begging for your attention, then settling delicately in your belly once acknowledged. It’s the breath in every decision you make. That’s why some choices feel full and expansive, while others feel tight and constricted. That’s trust breathing or suffocating.

As we slow and turn inward for the cozy winter months, despite holidays and to-do lists, our energy longs to shift from a boil to a simmer. Our inner lives grow quiet. God grows quiet. The earth grows quiet. It’s easy to trust the desires and guidance that arrive loud and clear. Their boldness reassures us. But what about when our own sacred voice whispers or doesn’t speak at all?

The spiritual path has always been punctuated by times of quiet. Sue Monk Kidd likened it to the rich silence of a cocoon. Saint John of the Cross called it a dark night of the soul. No matter what metaphor resonates, they have one thing in common: trust. Trust that the cocoon will dissolve and life will emerge. Trust that the sun will rise. Trust that newness germinates under the surface of silence.

Trust requires you to settle into your life as pilgrimage, not a race.
It’s a practice of pouring love into the quiet instead of fear,
of choosing to smooth desire into the silence,
of tenderly sheltering the embers of your inner life so they can blaze into flame,
of surrendering to the cycle of gestation, birth, life and death,
of asking for what you need and accepting the gifts that follow,
of remembering that every molecule of your being belongs to the Light,
of unmooring your expectations and sending them out to sea,
because wherever love brings you, it sustains you.

Greater is the Divine in you than any other force. Trust the quiet.

photo by Chelse Thompson.

Every marketer ever believes that entrepreneurs and business owners must inform clients and customers of the results they’ll get from a product or service. Seems pretty logical, right? However, that presents a problem when it comes to Energy Medicine. To be honest, I don’t know exactly what you’ll get out of it, or how drastically your life will change. I can’t give you a bulleted list of quantifiable outcomes. It’s impossible to predict the intensity of your expansion or the richness of your transformation.

What I do know, is that you’ll never be the same.
You’ll shed your soul-skin countless times in the days to come.
You’ll hear the voice of God whisper in your bones.
You’ll be drenched in the light of your Divinity.
You’ll be wooed by a path you’ve only caught glimpses of until now.
You’ll stand face to face with ravenous desire.
You’ll weep over wounds.
Not long after, you’ll press fingertips into glistening scar tissue.
You’ll discover super-human strength that leaves you shocked and breathless.
You’ll surrender to a river of miracles that draws you into a current of clarity.
You’ll reach into the depths of your rage, hear its grievances and fears, and feel it shake the earth.
You’ll find what breaks your heart and what pisses you off and use them like compasses.
Life will break you open and spill love everywhere.

I can’t say exactly what you’ll get. But I promise you’ll get exactly what you need. I promise you’ll change the landscape of your inner life. I promise you’ll fall deeper in love with your humanity through your divinity.

photo credit :: Hartwig HKD