Being The Dream!

Namaste Divine Dreamers! I greet you this Thoughtful Thursday in a place of peaceful balance as I allow priorities to inform my actions and disallow the sense of overwhelm and not enoughness I know too well as informant. You could say I am employing Unity tools of affirmation and denial to bring me into harmony along with a whole host of other tools from my Transformational Toolbox!

So! I return where I left off here on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Monday, drawing from a talk I gave wherein we explored Unity principles, which again, I must say are universal principles! We looked at ourselves as divine dream of the One Presence (principle #1) and spent time being with ourselves as divinity:

In the infinity of divinity and beauty created on this planet; magnificent life forms as tall as mighty majestic mountains and as small as miniscule mushroom mitochondria supporting all of life, so are we created with this same magnificence. Look at your hand or any part of your beautiful body now and see the wondrous Love you are created of. Be with your body, any part of it or all of it and feel yourself as this Love you are created of here and now ~ experience your body with Love, appreciation and celebration! Let’s sing it!

I Am! The acknowledgment and affirmation that we are Spirit, The metaphysical meaning of I AM denotes our oneness with Source. Created in Love, we are this Love and goodness expressed as stated in Unity principle #2, I am good, we are good, made in the likeness of our Creator, each of us embodies divinity. Sometimes or perhaps often times, in the wake of distraction and forgetfulness, we don’t see our divinity and beauty. We may not even see it in the beauty that always surrounds us; in our loved ones, spouses, children, parents, pets; in our food sitting on dishes crafted for us and our nourishment, beauty smiling at us from the tree outside our window, or from clouds in the sky or the colors there that begin and end each day. Beauty and goodness is indeed all around us and inside us even if and when we forget to notice it. All too often, we take beauty, divinity, creativity for granted! We forget who we are and where we are; beautiful divine miracles able to co-create our reality, co-create our dreams and callings into reality on this multifaceted dreamscape of beauty and abundance where we live. Even those of us on a conscious path are only aware of so much. Generally we take (too) much for granted, we don’t think too much about the very essence of life that animates our bodies ~ the breath! Our breath keeps our bodies alive of course yet it is also one of our greatest transformational tools! We all know to take a deep breath to calm down and many of us have practiced different breathing patterns in yoga and other teachings. Let’s center now with our breath as we breathe in the goodness and beauty of who we truly be. With or without this song, breathe deep now into the essence of the beautiful dream you are created of.

an you see yourself in the mirror of your mind with only eyes of unconditional Love and appreciation? Deepen into that appreciation and awareness of the beauty of your body temple, your spirit home; keep breathing beauty down deep in your depths, breathe your truth, you are a blessed breath.While the busy distractions of the world may call us away, we can always take a mindful moment to breathe (our) beauty. No matter where we are and what’s going on, we can always take a beautiful breath, a deep breath of our beautiful depths.

Unity principle # 3 says that we co-create our reality with our thoughts. Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind. This includes all we feel and believe. This can be the place where our dreams give way to a different “reality”; the one that surrounds us rather than the one inside us. When we think about the life we dream of, do we know it as possible or do we make alterations based on what others or society may say is not easy at best and impossible at worst. We know that impossible is also ‘I’m possible’ with the Spirit I Am of our being if we so choose it. Still most folks I know including me have dreams that are subject to a long list of compromises. Many dreams become ‘rationalized away’, some dreams are completely forgotten. Can you recall a forgotten dream now?

From the song When Dreams Die Â©1994 Laurie Story V
Where do dreams go when they die?
Do they live in salty tears that dreamers cry?
Or do they float to a home where hope can make them fly?
When dreams die, where do they go? Does anybody know?
Since I wrote that so many years ago, I have come to know there are many, many places dreams can go including into the divine order of alchemy and sometimes better, bigger dreams. If we live long enough, there’s usually at least 1 pretty big, aha, ‘ glad I didn’t get that’job, person, house, whatever, that you once thought was so perfect! And there is also the aforementioned dreams that we never realize due to arguing for our limitations. Just as we can forget or divinity, we can diminish our powerful creativity to create our dreams and visions. We are created out of Love AS Love to express Love! Acting on our dreams is a way we express the Love we are made of. Consciously, unconsciously, with divine grace, we are indeed the cocreators of our lives including how and if we manifest our dreams. Unity principle #4 says that we use cocreation manifestation tools like affirmative prayer and meditation.

Through spiritual practices, we do stay anchored in source and centered in our truth of beauty and goodness. We can use affirmations and denials. I love using the word CHOOSE to help me align with these tools and keep the words, intentions and vibrations positive, especially when I am needing to transition from a negative or low place like feeling lonely or unsupported, “I choose to know that I am not alone. I choose to know I am surrounded by Spirit and that I am loved and supported. “ In these positive denials and appreciative affirmations, I usually shift my feeling and vibration quickly. Words are so powerful! Along with prayer, meditation, denial, and affirmation, there are so, so many transformational tools like the breath and visualization, all of which help raise our vibrations of Love and Peace and goodness. We know that raising our own vibration also raises the whole planet’s energy and can even help those who are suffering next door or around the world! The vibration conversation is, of course, an important one in our evolution! In the wake of this moment’s unification conversation, we take note of how embodying our divinity does indeed ripple out to the world. Which brings us to the 5th and final Unity principle:

With this, we return to the truth of our beautiful breath selves and living our dreams. We remember to be anchored in Source, to breathe our beauty, to dream, to use our transformational tools to align with the shine of our divine design, to be and live the truth of the dream we were birthed to be.

No matter where we are planted and who we are with, we can and will keep listening and trusting our own divinity and creativity, unified with Source and our divine essence. We choose to stay anchored in this omnipresent, ever present presence, breathing our beauty, living from this place, able to reset into our beautiful depths in any moment. We can, will, do, use our transformational tools to know our dreams and live them. Aligned with Source and highest good, we raise our vibrations and send this blessing out to raise the consciousness of humanity. Together, we dream and we rise, living the dream of the Love we are created of. And so it is!

PS
I am sharing the dream in Leaping Literacy Library with a spotlight on Panda this week! The gentle giant is a beautiful breath of beauty gracing the planet for the last 8 million years! Once a carnivore, now Panda only eats bamboo and reminds us to sit peacefully and chew on our blessings! Namaste, Love!

Living The Dream!

Namaste Dreamers and Peacemakers!
Greetings on this holy day holiday celebrating the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.!
Let us listen to his melodic voice from his “I Have A Dream” speech as well as some song inspirations in this ETV segment playing in our Leaping Literacy Library ETV:

Here are lyrics from another one of our songs honoring Dr. King:

I gave a talk yesterday at the Unity Spiritual Community, Citrus Heights touching on Dr. King and inspirational others yet mostly focused on each of us as divine creation, breathing in the beauty we truly be. Today I will share a few points and power point slides from the talk as well as lessons learned DOing the talk!

The usual custom these days is to have a video recording of the talk yet apparently the FaceBook live stream ended up being a Zoom view of one of the participants rather than us so it was deleted. I am still hoping to at least hear an audio of it.
(1/18 Update! For any on FaceBook, the talk I speak of in this post did post there!)

Yet! Herein lies so many more spiritual lessons! I will leave it at 3:
1. Trust the divine order of ALL, paying attention to what the ALL might be saying at any given time! The main trick in doing this with an appreciation celebration is to release expectation of how things “should” be rooted in the knowing that it is ALWAYS for the highest if we let it be. And! Knowing we are always flowing with what we allow and can ALWAYS keep choosing what we allow!

2. There were several people yesterday both live and on Zoom who expressed their gratitude and blessings from hearing my musical talk. Their heart felt kindness expressed, reverberates in me especially if a wondering of, “How was that?” creeps in. The lesson here is, it is ALWAYS great to express your appreciation of another!

3. Back to divine order paired with discernment. I spent a lot of time and energy on doing the talk experience and it was a wonderful one in so many ways. Yet! It necessarily means other important projects in my world were put on hold. My ongoing sorting of prioritizing my callings is SO present and real ~ AlWAYS!

In the same way I talked at other churches and performed in schools and libraries for so many years with no video or audio records, I get to sit with what the experience was. I think the biggest thing I “messed up” was showing my power point slides in the right places 🙂 and I was guided to print them into my paper copy of the talk and just got too tired and outa time to do it! It was a small thing while I mastered a big thing by delivering the talk, mediation and songs pretty darn close to the prescribed time. No small feat for me! Though of course, I was working with all things possible, divine flow Source. I could ‘improve’ my presentation by not talking about these ‘flubs’ during the talk yet that’s me, always my heart on my sleeve. And perhaps it makes me and the whole thing more real ~ there is that crazy thing called reality as a part of living the dream! I loved being able to use the prepared talk to keep me on (timing) track while I left plenty of what was written out and allowed Spirit to say some of those written words and plenty that weren’t actually on paper, as such. A fun flow of divinity, creativity, and functionality!

SO! The spiritual lesson here is to fully allow the goodness of what was and sift that through with trust! Trust your callings and dreams ~ always and in ALL ways!

So! How about sharing a bit of the talk here and now?! I began with a song and meditation to center into Source, to allow “Peace breathing me”.

From this centered place, we began the unification conversation. There were many points from the talk I could make here yet since I have blogged on about the experience of doing it, let’s be with the first part of it and I will return with more over the next few weeks. Among other things, the talk was an overview of the 5 Unity principles, each of which is a talk all their own! As I approach the anniversary of New Thought Families as a .com, this process is great for my discernment and commitments for this space going forward. Leaping Literacy Library spiritual family literacy resources continue on ~ no matter the name! After all, Unity principles are at their heart, universal principles!

Oh yes in the center of the Circle of Life is our ever present, omni present Great Creator! The 1st basic Unity principle is that there is One Presence, One Power, God the Good. We come from this Source, by any name, breathed into existence with this Love of Creation. Could it be that our very lives are born out of our Creator’s dream? The one Presence had a dream of us! The mighty essence of creation had a dream to Love more, express more, BE more Love! To be yes Love expressed AS US! Perhaps at the very heart of what it means to live the dream is to acknowledge that WE ARE the dream! In this way, we can step away from the cynical meme when we say we are ‘Living the Dream’ because we are indeed, in the truest sense living our Creator’s dream of us as Love expressed, divinity expressed, creativity expressed. Which brings us naturally to Unity Principle # 2. Next week!
Namaste beautiful breath of Life expressed!

PS. Here’s some old recordings of the 2 songs I opened and closed the talk with!
~ Currently here in our Library ETV that is always streaming commercial free!

Harvest August Promise!

Namaste Blessed Wonders of Wowness! I greet you with awareness of our sacredness this Lammas Day, 1st of August Promise!

Lammas is the midpoint holiday between Summer Solstice (last time i was here at the blog!) and the upcoming Fall Equinox coming in September (9/22/23). While mainstream consciousness looks at the Solstices and Equinoxes because of the sun’s and astronomical placements, the midpoint holidays were and still are celebrated by some in pagan traditions. Lammas and Lughnasa are the first of the Harvest Festival celebrations followed by Mabon and Samhain.

Image: Wheel_of_the_Year.gif but redrawn, Public Domain Found Here

Interfaith traditions and reflections can help all of us find navigation and inspiration. August begins with this harvest focus under a full super moon. It is invitation to give seasonal gratitude for the abundance of sun, food, life itself! The celebration can also be invitation to wrap up things in progress, tie up loose ends, take care of unfinished business.

I am allowing for all of the above; celebrating so much gratitude and abundance while simultaneously being with my harvest mess. At the worst, I can focus on mess as lack of coherence and at best, mess is just creative chaos here to bless. In the Lammas, August Promise Spirit, I offer you a few July vlogs that went unposted. Here’s a quick overview video of the 2 that are offered in full on the site; one a short shout out from Silver Lake and the other an embrace of self and infinite potentiality!

So! There is actually quite a bit more that went into the quiet corner in July like this tearful vlog about Feathers Camp that will be posting here 1st sacred Sunday in August, 8/6:

1st Sacred Sunday in August? Yes, I am vowing to post a sacred something each Sunday in August here in this space ~ even if it’s a vlog from last month. July vlogs in August? Why not? In the circle of time, I am choosing to re-align with my Harvest! Part of my mess happens when I fail to say yes, resistance acts as an anchor to slow or stop progress. So there are many areas of life and production harvest that I am choosing to say yes to! Again!

Are there places in your life where you resist actions you are called to do including recognizing and appreciating your harvests of abundance? It really is never too late!
We do well to regularly take stock of all we have, do, are. We CAN keep showing up for whatever is calling … especially if it is the same or a similar call. If the call is indeed coming from our heart and soul, by saying yes, we are always blessed!

So yes, there are many aspects I am saying a blessed yes to and I have them mapped out for our Sacred Sunday Somethings. In part, the structure is my way of saying yes ~ to me ~ and to you if you so choose!

I am also finishing our Sea Splash ETV Series this August that I ‘ran out of time’ and energy for last summer! I am choosing to return for Whale, Narwhal, Mermaid, Seahorse and more! Yippee Skippee Harvest of Creativity!

Our ETV Feature Creature Teachers this week are Crab and Octopus. I am definitely an Octopus! From multitasking to ghosting or hiding out, I relate to the wonderous Octo in so many ways! As I bless the mess of my harvest and invest in the August Promises including Sacred Something Sundays, I am inspired by the 3 hearts and 9 brains of Octopus as well as the way Crab moves sideways, so fast!

Explore Octopus and Crab @ ETV! Whoever and however you are called to play and explore facets of you, your life, your harvest blessings, may you say yes to all that calls you to be yes expressed! Love and Appreciation! Hugs and Celebration!

Rebirth & Renewal

Namaste Beautiful Beings of Sacred Awareness!

I hope you are finding your centered place of yes blessedness in the midst of the chaos we collectively face. Times of breakdown are portals into breakthroughs, woo hoo! And there can be a lot of pain along the way in this human journey. Yet! Spirit is always here to Love us through, inviting us to release resistance and to embrace the new. In keeping with these callings, this blog has moved to our new commercial free space; the branch of Leaping Literacy Library called Creative Family Literacy. We have new and developing Invitations and Celebrations there supporting you and yours for Traditional, Creative, and Spiritual Family Literacy. I hope to see you there in this new start and I wish you all the best in living true to you, following the wisdom of your heart! Namaste, Love!

Singing Notes Of Hope

Namaste shining beacons of hope!

I greet you in the flame of the 1st Advent candle lit this week for hope as we open our hearts to this 2020 Christmas season and the beckoning of a new, brighter year. I have a whole list of 2020 gifts to share here at some point this month yet this Transformational Tuesday of charitable giving, I am focused on the powerful gift of hope.

Our newest Om HomETV is centered on the fiery power of hope with song and some time to play and pray. Our Feature Creature Teacher is Hummingbird who reminds us of the power of small and the mightiness in keeping it light. As the tiny teacher Hummingbird shows us ~ when we are light weight energy moving with faith filled dreams, we do feel joyous and filled with hope.

The smallest bird in the world has the biggest brain and certainly keeps the energy moving!

The whole OM Hope show is below at the end of this post if you want to spend more time with Hummingbird and all the rest. From The Transformational Toolbox, there are 3 invitation celebrations. Should you choose, here it is in a video excerpt and/or in part, in the wonders of words!

Om HomETV Transformational Tool of Hope

Yes! As we reach into our Transformational Toolbox for hope, we find the friends of hope are there too; light, faith, imagination, dreams, joy, and as always, divine energy flowing!

Shine the light into any darkness!

Hope is the light in the darkness. A deep despair feeling is a dark place we can light up with a hope filled thought. The candle is an age old transformational tool and these days (especially with younger children), we can easily use a battery operated flame or even a flashlight to call in the light. We can call in the light to any darkness. You can sit in a dark room and then switch on a battery candle or flashlight in silent motion or affirmation spoken. As we affirm the presence of light in hopeful affirmation, we fill our hearts and minds with faith. We choose to believe in our hope filled thoughts. Let’s try this now …
Think of anything that feels like darkness … some disappointment, disillusionment, or despair. You can have eyes closed or be in a dark room, ready to flip the switch of light. Your affirmation of light opens your mind and heart with the power of hope and new possibilities. Hope is a light in the dark! Hope is also the fuel for your dreams! When you open up, with a hopeful yes and let your imagination help you experience your dream as reality, you are entering into the great potentiality that you possess as co-creator. As we spend transformational time with hope, we know that we can always begin again in any moment we have only to say YES!

Shine the light of hope on any darkness!

As we embrace the infinite possibilities that hope helps us center in, we play with the light. Feature Creature Teacher Hummingbird in free form flight is always feeding from the sweetness of life, reminding us to keep our energy moving and light!

Helicopter Hummingbird can fly in any direction reminding us to change course (of thought) as needed. Keep your energy moving in a positive direction. Keep it light!

LIGHT! Shine a light on any darkness with hope filled affirmation. You can also illume any dreams or visions with imagination! Spend time with your dreams fueled by hope filled faith … experience your dreams as reality with imagination ignited by your hopeful YES I can! Feel the comfort and joy that hope brings!

At New Thought Families, we are playing in the light for our daily Play and Pray Calendar tis December. We are singing our transformational thoughts to the traditional tunes of Christmas. And this week, we center on hope with our Feature Creature Teacher Hummingbird ETV, Power Point, and Ask and Affirm Cards. Our new Your TruEBook templates are focused on generating hopeful thoughts all found on our Leaping Literacy Library Free Shelf. With or without our templates, generating hopeful thoughts you can draw from at any time you need a lift, can be a positive, light filled gift!

EnJOY our Leaping Literacy Library Free Shelf Resources for fostering Hope!

YES! We be blessed with the light of hope. Thank you so much for sharing your light here and in the world! Below is our Om HomETV Show, Notes of Hope. It’s also found at famlit.tv

Keep your flame of hope ignited as you fly freely, lightly and playfully with your dreams! Namaste friends.

Spring Seeds: Kindness Kisses

Namaste Spring Seeds Of Awareness, Goodness, and Blessed Yesness!

Seeds of Infinity Bless Our Endless Possibilities!

I greet you in the name of holy divinity seeding infinite possibilities this International Women’s Day in mighty March! I am ever aware and eternally grateful of the wondrous women who have gone before as well as all those standing tall among us now. We are ever yes blessed by the courage that has been helping to seed our ways today.

This could be a well deserved post about great women. This could be a commentary of the latest women who ran for president only to be outvoted by old white men. This could speak to the corona virus or any of the other top stories in our fast paced news cycle and ongoing, evolving lives. There is always much to say here especially when a month rolls by in-between visits. This is a place I show up to speak my truth in various ways.

-Strangely, I still feel some affinity with this space. I suppose because I have been coming here for so many years. Despite the ongoing invitation and justification to build a social media profile and relationship with others, I haven’t been able to go there. For many reasons.

This is a day when having a social media following and community would be ideal. Not just to celebrate great women but to announce and celebrate something I have been birthing, literally for years! I was sure it was happening on last years ~ and this years! ~ New Thought Families (website) February anniversaries. I was REALLY sure it was happening on super Saturday Leap Day, 2/29/20! Then, I leaned into the great action day of Marth 4th. Too many other ongoing commitments with family elders and my Student Author Program. Yet! Daily actions, chipping way … and today is the day!

Leaping Literacy ETV is born! YIPPEE!

It’s just a little web show from my Victorian Playhouse. It’s just a tiny seed planted long ago raising up taller this day. It’s just a little concept I have been nurturing for years. It’s just a little dream that the great Mr. Rogers has been holding space on my altar for … for a whole lotta months. It’s still far from perfect, production wise. (Deep apologies for what *should* be an Australian accent for the koala Kara! And ongoing green screen learnings!) And ya, production aside, there’s the communication piece that is all but missing. You know, the community I am here to serve waiting to receive this ~ ?! Like dropping my last CD on Independence Day, July 4th, without a waiting audience, it is indeed a tree falling in the forest. I have always been in the camp that says of course there’s a sound even if no one else hears it!

Ah, the Oneness Of Co-Creation … In Imagination, Manifestation, and Celebration!

And goodness knows, there could be a whole team doing this; a team spreading the word much less creating the art. I do have wonderful friends in Rev Karene and Big Don lending their time, talent and treasure in this venture, yay for Owlive, Fido and Gramma K! And I do indeed have a Spirit team that has always been with me in this and all things; I know for sure, it is not I but the Spirit within me that doeth the work.

So here it is!

Because I am too full of it to speak to much else, I do hope you can experience this with us now, for the betterment of all. You can also experience our ETV debut on the New Thought Families’ Inspiration page here!

Serving FUNdamental, Creative, and Spiritual Family Literacy,
Our Leaping Literacy ETV is born with Spring Kisses!

In ramping into this for so long, there is all kinda footage in various stages of production; from fall leaves and squirrels, bats, Christmas, Ida B Wells, Sojourner Truth and MORE. I wanted SO to include the women on this international day of celebration ~ even trying to weave it in at the beginning or end. I let it go for the flow of the show ~ yet! Here it is ~ just because. Also on the NTF Inspirations page, I want some of the honoring to come up out of the silence.

Well there it is. Yes, we are still reorganizing the Leaping Literacy Library. Yes, the Free Shelf is being tended to weekly. And! Our very teeny tiny wee fee of $29 put in place last month is being held over for Membership March. Hundreds of songs! Hundreds of Laurie StorEBooks! Hundreds of videos! All for practically free. That’s Leaping Literacy!

We have also made available our year long For Humanity Calendar as well as our daily Play & Pray Plant Seeds March Calendar. Plant seeds of compassion, tenderness, goodness!

Make no mistake, you are planting seeds of divine goodness all the time. For this I am so grateful. Thank you for being here to share in all that it is to be aware and share the prayer. Namaste Love!

I Will Dream With You

Namaste 2019 Dreams of Hope, Resilience, Forgiveness and Goodness! Happy New Year! Happy Birthday Dr. King!Ah yes, the dreams of our nation. Remember them in the midst of our current chaos?! While this would be a worthy conversation, especially on Dr. King’s (real!) birthday, it is the personal dreams of you that I want to focus on this moment. Yes, dreams begin with me and from the place of reclaimed personal dreams, we are stronger in our courage and convictions to (re)build the collective dreams of society and humanity.

So! How do your dreams grow? Are they alive and well? Withered, forgotten? Somewhere in between? This time of year, we take our Monday holiday and remember the words of the great Dr. King. We lament how 5 decades later, his dreams are still not fully realized and in some ways still seem so far out of reach. Yet! We renew our awareness and aspirations of dreaming and being them true! He reminds us to never give up on his dreams ~ or on ours either!The new year brings us new hope and often resolutions of change that can go unimplemented or broken within days or weeks. We may choose defeat and let go of the dream that inspired the resolution for change. Yet! Just as we see the truth and goodness in Dr. King’s iconic dream, let us hold the same for ourselves. Our hearts are ever calling us to our higher selves through inspirations, recurring thoughts, dreams … it is ours to do to show up for them … again and again!The essence of dreams is rooted in Love, they call us to reach up and out, like branches reaching for the light in an effort to grow and fully become. Love’s opposite, fear, quite naturally springs up to throw shade on our dreams in a myriad of ways. Our job is to keep returning to Love and light that we may embody our highest callings ~ regardless of the timeline! Mother Teresa famously said, “Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” Let us thereby stay faithful to Love and to dreams ~ our own and those of the collective Love!The Spirit of Kokopelli is presiding over my new home and the state of my birthing new dreams here. Carrying the Spirit of the ancestors, of music, of children, I align with Kokopelli’s magical, mystical properties as one of my dream totems. We all need good, supportive energy in birthing dreams. So, in this mindful moment, let us dream together … your dreams, my dreams, the dreams of divinity through humanity. Let us continue to dream the dreams of Dr. King, for justice, equality, peace. Let us not tire of dreaming, let’s keep believing. Let us look to our children as teachers as they look at the world with possibility! At our first monthly PlayShop of 2019, the children of one beautiful family shared their dream to sell eggs to raise money for kids in hospitals. I am a happy customer! Blessed by their dream! And so it is that we can help incubate each other’s dreams. I will dream with you, Love!