What do our two recent Enlightened Life Lovers blog posts have in common (Cat in a Small Box & “I Was Born This Way”)?  A great metaphor, that’s what!  Who among us actually “fits” in any box?  Do you have as much trouble checking the demo boxes as I do?  People weren’t made with cookie cutters (well, I guess we would technically have to ask the Creator about this).  You will find that you will lose parts of you the minute you try to fit into any box in life.  So I wouldn’t recommend it.

What’s the alternative?  I’ll tell you, but it’s not for the weak of heart.  The answer is “authenticity.”  It’s about showing up and stepping out as the snowflake you really truly are!  (They’re all different, remember?)  No one else can offer this big beautiful world your gifts and talents, your perspective and wisdom.  So I guess you’re going to have to do it, right?  You have dances and songs and poems and brilliance in you.  Don’t be stingy and don’t be scared — share with us!

I’ll admit, this kitten makes trying to fit in a box the cutest exercise I’ve every seen!  (And as we all know, the yogic prowess of felines is legend!)  However, I wouldn’t advise that we try this — it never looks (or feels) quite so cute!

So, go be your Self!  Put on your dancing shoes, grab that hula hoop, don that psychedelic t-shirt, and be your Amazing Beautiful Self baby!  (Now thems some abs!)

This past weekend the world witnessed a chapter reflecting a most extreme contrast.  We celebrated the Royal Wedding on Friday, and then heard on Sunday night that Osama Bin Laden had been located and killed.  It is hard to wrap our heads (let alone our hearts) around two such discrepant successive intense events of global significance.  This is what is meant by the term “contrast,” and this is the challenge of precisely this time in human history — the envelope called The Shift.

Our community is called “Enlightened Life Lovers” and our intention is to stay heart-centered.  My invitation is simple, but not easy.  I invite each of you, as well as myself, to embrace both extremes of this current contrast with love (instead of fear), with compassion (instead of judgement), and with both hope + faith.  Have faith that all that unfolds invites us to a higher order of ourselves as heart-centered human beings.  Hold hope for the day when lines will not need to be drawn, swords will rust in their sheaths, and we truly will understand that there is no “other” but that we are all One.

This is the time to choose wisely how and where we spend out time, talents and treasures.  This is the time to sharpen our awareness and invite Enlightenment in every aspect of our lives.  Shine your light so that we may all better find our way to the Divine truth of our Being.  

Live in as much love as possible, and let in joy at every turn.  Meet “contrast” in that field Rumi invites us to — “Out beyond all wrong doing and right doing there is a field.  I’ll meet you there.”  For surely this will make the load lighter, the light brighter, and the journey more joyful.  You are blessed with a wonderful community — our tribe of Enlightened Life Lovers.  Connect often with compassion and support.

The month of February connotes Valentine’s Day, which turns our thoughts to the topic of “love.”  But what is love?  Is it a feeling?  A force?  Is it God?  Is it all there is?  Trying to define “love” is like trying to define “infinity.”  How do words come remotely close to capturing either?

If we use the concept so freely, I suggerst that we get honest and real with it.  I find that we may know love best by knowing what it is not.  By contrast, that is.  We instinctively know when we are not feeling or behaving in a loving way.  And perhaps, even more so, we know when someone else is not being loving toward us.  At its best, this process of noticing helps us to tune ourselves up. 

In “love relationships” it gets even more murky.  What so often passes for love is actually obsession or addiction.  Do you really love that person, or do you need them?  Love is unconditional.  Anything else is an imposter.  To love is to embrace without clutching, to give versus to barter, and to allow instead of to control. 

This is how we get real with love.  Sound like a tall order?  While it is not easy, it is possible, at least in glimpses anyway.  And the key is self-reverence.  To value oneself is to value others.  To like oneself is to accept others as they are.  To trust oneself is to allow others to be as they are.  A strong and steady loving relationship with oneself opens the gateway for loving relationships with others and with all of life. 

So on Valentine’s Day and all other days, get real with love.  Practice awareness of love, and cultivate the relationship with Self that is the fertile soil within which love can grow.  You do not need to define love when you are able to live it.  You will just know.  From my heart to yours, Happy Valentine’s (every)Day!