Namaste Meditative Minds & Brave Hearts ~ Circle of Life Alive & Bright! Glad Greetings this Mindful Monday! We are celebrating Spring ~ Equinox 3/19, Easter 3/31, Palm Sunday hailing Holy Week and dad’s 2 year departure date anniversary, 3/24. Whew! No wonder this post took me more than a minute. I vlogged and blogged most of this on the 24th yet it took well into the 25th to get here. So! It’s here and NOW so let’s hop to it! Thank you, thank you for joining me; let’s be wHOLY centered in this celebration circle of Life!
On this 2 year anniversary date of my dear ‘ol dad’s departure, I am SO reminded to keep finishing what I start and to commit and re-commit to all I choose to do as me, Laurie Story V. May my life be an incarnation celebration for the Love that created me, expressing as me ~ may my humaness be Love blessed, yes expressed!
And so it is that the Circle of Life and Love bring us to this moment; the top of Holy Week, Spring/Autumn, Birth/Death, Seeds, Gold, Rainbows, Bunnies, oh my! Let’s Play & Pray in this 3/24/24 reverent & playful Vlog:
This vlog is a voluminous 24 minutes on the 24th day and year. So! If you just need a blessedly brief spring salutation invitation, got you clovered, click this one!
The egg altar in the video above joins many other spring invitations here. My home has been enJOYing some Spirit Rising UPliftment this month including a visit from Mr. and Mrs Clover who came to visit on Equinox! Their video is linking this week with more Om Home invitations on our Leaping Literacy Library Spring page.
There are SO many Spring invitations hopping about here at home and in the Leaping Literacy Library. Our daily Play & Pray video calendar, Planting Seeds has us planting Love, Hope, Joy, Surrender … oohh, let’s DO today’s Reverence:
There are SO many ways to be reverent for this gift of life. Always centered in awareness and nurtured with gratitude, reverence provides us a good compass for our heart and soul. As I discuss in the vlog, our inner GPS< Grace Positioning System, is always a wise whisper away to bring us back to the center essence of our egg, ourselves embodied as that Love blessed, yes expressed.
Rabbit is center stage this week with lots of celebrations @ famlit.tv and here with other spotlighted spring things on our New Thought Families Mindful Multimedia page including the Spring Celebration Om HomETV show.
If you shared the 24/24/24 vlog with me, yippee skippee! If you want to hear some of those songs, yippee skippee x3! Ostara, Daddy’s Song, and Pot of Gold are linked below on the Site Blog! From the bottom of my egg to yours, thank you for singing along in the musical rainbow of my heart & soul song!
And! Before we go, let us send 1 breath of peaceful love into the world ~ aho!
Sent with the breath of this month’s full moon! (In this time zone, 3/25, 3:00 a.m.) Picture taken 3/24, 9:00 p.m.
Wherever you are, this holy moment in the Circle, I wish you Joyful Peace & Passionate Purpose that you are able to experience with reverence & express with happiness. Yippee Skippee! We truly be Love blessed, yes expressed! Namaste, Love!
Namaste Divine Shine Valentines! I greet you in Love this Valentine’s eve turned day ~ Happy Valentine’s Day! We have lots of Valentine & heart celebrations @ famlit.tv and here on our New Thought Families Mindful Multimedia page including the Divine Shine Valentine Om HomETV show. Our February Heart of Love video calendar is playing to remind us daily to be home in the heart of Love. My mind and heart are stayed on the freedom of big Love; the ‘Always Love’ referred to by Earnest Holmes that I put into song some time back and return to often, especially on Valentine’s Day. For while the holiday is indeed a celebration of couples and romantic love, it is a spotlight on Love itself, what it means and what it brings. And what we bring to it. I embrace it as a joyful holy day even though I am not coupled. I did an active meditation on the word Valentine as Love in action:
It is fully explained in the Valentine vlog @ New Thought Families if you want to spend some heart shine time with me. You can also do your own heart exploration meditation with these words or whatever words, concepts, visions, come to you.
However you celebrate Love on this and every day, may you know yourself in the heart of it. Thank you for your divine shine, visionary Valentine! Namaste, Love!
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?
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!
Greetings of Peaceful New Beginnings! Happy 2024! A year to dream more while we alchemically explore what has gone before! Here is a New Year’s vlog speaking to the circle; a return to Music Camp, coming home, December blog absence, and alchemical song of life ringing on. Found here!
Yes, I continue to sift, sort, situate all aspects of life ~ peacefully! I will be doing a talk for Unity Spiritual Community on 1/14 entitled, “Living the Dream: A Co-Creation Unification Conversation. I will also share it, at least in part, here. In this right now, new day, new year moment, I pray for peace. For each heart, and the heart of humanity, I pray for peace. We are created and rooted in unconditional Love that knows and abides by peace. My prayer is that all beings will continue to evolve and embody more and more of this essence. Here is a singing prayer, a kind of a meditative chant, for Peace. I sang it last night as the clock and calendar turned. I continue to sing it as we embrace this new start. Within ourselves, each of us, and all of us nationally and globally. Peace, let there be peace … Found here!
As I keep releasing and breathing Peace, I am updating the Leaping Literacy Library structure including this blog, more on that soon as our new year unfolds. For now, I simply, again, wish you Peace. This is from the ‘peace tree’ decorated in my front yard. Peace, beloveds, Peace, from my heart to your heart, heart by heart we unite and ignite more and more peace on earth.
Namaste Blessed Awareness in the Divine Design Circle! I greet you at the end of this Mystery month, as we near Samhain, aka, Halloween. I remain in a deep clean of my work webs, ever rejoicing for the gifts of life. I am surrounded in remembrances of my ancestors who are illuminated now at Samhain.
Ah, the time of year where ghosts, goblins, tombstones, giant spiders, all appear in people’s yards as decorations with Jack-o’-lanterns, initially constructed to ward off evil spirits, now elaborately stencil carved ~ all of it in the name of fun.
Here, on this web space, we play with Spider, Pumpkin, Cat, Cat, Owl, as Feature Creature Teachers with much to say about how we are the co-creators of the web of our own lives. Our fun is to align with the shine of our divine design!
Spider is being integrated on our Oneness page for a visit in any season! She joins our other Feature Creature Teachers of the month, Bat, Cat, Owl, and Pumpkin, in the backroad wrap up vlog that also speaks to nature and the ancestors found on our New Thought Families Blog page. Nature is indeed always our great healer, teacher, preacher, and soul reacher, speaking to us of earth’s rhythms and seasons and also always offering beautiful sacred ground to stand upon ~ barefoot if you can! The Mother Earth is always providing us a place to anchor and ground for more wellbeing. She is also always whispering of all who came before, and are still here now in the circle.
It is said the veil is thinnest this time of year between here and those who have gone before us, oft referred to as the dead, they are simply not in bodies among us anymore. Their Spirits live on and are available to us to continue our relationships, just in a different configuration. People often receive signs from their loved ones on the other side ~ pennies, butterflies, anything of meaning can bring a meeting of heart and mind. Most often, our departed loved ones are held in memories rather than direct presence interaction yet any medium can tell you, their loving Spirits certainly are among us should we choose to experience them. In meditating on how I wanted to speak to this today, a new song was born! It is an invitation into conversation and inspiration with whoever comes to heart and mind. Brand New Song: Ancestor Circle is playing on our Blog Page
I mention my mom and dad, aunt and uncle yet I have friends I also visit with regularly. My dear Renee gave me a Tinkerbell travel mug and I often speak to her when using it. Today was a special event for Faith, the matriarch of the SF Folk Music Club and I really felt her reaching out ~ literally through the voices of a few club members I haven’t connected with in a while. Faith and Ranger Bob, both gone from here 10 years now though they, and others, are still friends I visit with. Of course ancestor visits are necessarily different than human to human interactions yet Spirit relationships are real nonetheless. I have been experiencing them my whole life and am the richer for it, to be sure. This way of being has also eased some of the pain experienced in the transition we all go through when a loved one makes their transition to the other side. A huge part of having these Spirit relationships is doing what we can to honor what they left behind, sometimes the actual physical things that require us to be their hands and feet for incompletes. I have had a heaping helping of this from multiple peeps and it has made me all that much more inspired to take care of as much of my own accumulation as I possibly can. Having relationships with those on the other side is a huge inspiration to live fully while here. I am currently embracing life as if I have another 30 years or could go tomorrow. Truth is, that is one Mystery question most of us don’t know.
These Ancestor Treasure, Vintage Voices are playing on our Blog Page and @ famlit.tv
And so it is that I bid you a sacred Samhain, and take leave of you with these ancestor voices. May your holiday be fun and may you also connect with a dear one or ones on the other side if that calls to you. Thank you for answering the callings of your heart and for sharing this moment in the circle with me. Namaste, Love!
Namaste Bright Spot of Beauty in the Circle! A Blessed, Balanced Equinox to You!
In what is hopefully a positive transformation, the promised Sacred Sunday posts of September went into renegotiation. I will return on Sacred Sunday, 10/1/23! There is a bit more on that below in the ‘Entropy and Evolution’ section. For NOW, let’s focus on the turn of the wheel at hand! Equinox!
I am joining you in the Equinox Spirit of Balance. This post comes in sacred circle awareness celebration of the Tao of dark and light, day and night, yes and no, fast and slow, male and female energies, structured and chaotic synergies. Here, we are embracing the fall season and Mabon. Let’s sing it @ New Thought Families:
As we embrace this time of balance ~ equal light and dark ~ and prepare ourselves for winter or summer depending on where we are on the globe, nature invites us to clean, take stock, prepare for the new season ahead. All in good balance, right?! Here are a few Equinox activities that can bring harmony and balance:
1. Clean house! This can include everything from a light dust to washing windows and reorganizing closets to moving furniture and re-hanging pitures!
It is a perfect time to clean; spring cleaning and fall cleaning are a natural rhythm for many of us. As part of the dusting off process, purging of excess is always good. Use it or lose it! For some of us abundant collectors, this can be quite a time! As I was just walking again, 6 months ago, for spring cleaning, I have been going after the corners this fall like never before. Coming up on 5 years in this playhouse and there is no spot safe from the sweep, much less the overhaul! Like so much of life, a certain chaos of cleaning can happen. In my case, this week, I kinda went off the rails with some deep clean renovation work around the playhouse The vlog takes you into some of the deep dives though the vlog itself was definitely a chaotic journey in process all week long. Enter at your own risk ~ @ New Thought Families!
2. Reset your altar(s) with seasonal remembrances and inspirations. Bring nature or nature remembrances in to amplify the energies. Center in the light of the candle’s flame allowing it to ignite more illumination in knowing your inner light’s glow.
Here is our nature altar and prayer from today’s Equinox walk with friend Jessie:
3. Use fall leaves and acorns for release and stocking up! In this ETV Transformational Tools segment, I do this process if you want to travel through the deets with me. Yet, let me just give you the overview as invitation and you can do this process in any way that works for you!
Fall leaves represent release. What do you want to let go of in your life? Can you use leaves as a representation of these things? Write them on the leaves and ‘leaf’ them around where you can see them, burn them, or anything else that calls you deeper as reminders and remembrances into your letting go process.
Squirrels are busy hiding acorns this time of year. They stash them away for cold, bleak winter days. What would you like to stockpile for any dark days or moments ahead? Think of as many heart smilers as you can. You can even just make a list and remember where to look for it when you need a smile to balance out any sadness, grumpies, etc. Making art or something visual to hang around or put in a pretty box you can pull out are great ways to do this. What can you use to remind you of all that makes your heart smile and brings light to any darkness, warmth to any cold?
Entropy and Evolution
Nature is always in entropy and evolution. Thereby, so are we! The breakdown or decay of entropy is part of our aging process and what can be termed as chaotic in terms of personal or collective changes in our structures. Many factors can be seen as unstable yet we know that in divine order, all IS in order even when it is in breakdown mode. Sometimes this is readily seen on the physical plane yet it also lives and sometimes reins in the mental or emotional bodies.
My son, Jeremiah, first taught me about entropy many years ago. This year, after graduating college, he has been travelling Central America alone, though definitely with Spirit, pictured here after a 10 day silent retreat high atop a mountain in Peru. His adventure has been one of divine order and evolution. The entropy moments have been managed masterfully; Jeremiah is not only intelligent smart, he is heart smart, able to navigate for his highest and best.
For my part, I have long been struggling with my life’s work in terms of what is doable for 1 person and how much sense it makes to keep creating work that goes unseen, much less paid. If I allow ‘common sense’ to have its way with me, I would never create another thing, ever again! For better or for worse, I do not choose common and do choose the spiritual senses that say, just create! That’s who you are and always will be, yippee, skippee! Trust, flow, create! Allow entropy, trust evolution and transformation! So! I am calendarizing the rest of the year with the life’s work I am still vowing to rectify. Though, continuing to show up lately has been a challenge to say the least, I am continuing to commit. And recommit. And recommit. Until entropy and/or evolution whisper me and my co-creative energies elsewhere in the circle of creation.
Wherever you are on your journey this equal day/night, may your entropy be filled with divinity ~ a divine shine aligned with order, always, and in all ways. Blessed Be, Balanced Love Expressed!
Namaste Sacred Awareness in the Circle! And a Sweet New Year to You! Yes, the Jewish New Year begins this Friday beckoning a time to release and embrace a sweet new year.
Below are some Leaping Literacy Library teachings and songs from guest Joanie Calem a few years back. Under those I have a few videos from 2 years ago that are reminding me of the ever present, omnipresent presence of hope and positivity in the circle of life and time. In some ways, they seem spot on for today. Kinda the good news and bad news. I also have blogs quoted and linked from 9 and 10 years ago with some of my same life laments & attempts. Sigh. I embrace myself & my phyche in the circle!
If you are intrigued, do peruse these snapshot invitations into oneness awareness’, yet irrespective of visiting with me from the past, here are some mediation invitations to visit with YOU in the circle…
Are there patterns you have been aware of repeating for what may feel like too long? Can you love yourself deeply even and especially through any desire or need to transform them? Can you reside in divine order or at least a ‘good enough’ acceptance?
Can you see and appreciate the different facets of you that have changed despite the persistent pattern? Can you find a balance of oneness in all of it?
All of the above ponderings leave me with this look at oneness from the past. I am at one with this & with you in the circle. Thank you for joining me. Namaste, Love!
I greet you late day this Sacred Sunday in a grateful allowance of promise after promise! I speak to the challenges and celebrations of being me in this week’s video vlog sitting (via technology!) by the sea. I speak of my pervasive patterns and ask what is in you, waiting to be honored. There is an invitation to sing with me; my little mermaid song that speaks to what it is to live in divine flow:
I am a mermaid in the ocean of life flowing like water, playing like an otter, knowing like a daughter of the sea free, free, free, musical, magical mermaid me
How are you flowing with your sacred truth? What are you doing to play and honor that all important child and playful spirit that lives in you? What are you knowing; mystical, wise child of creation? In your flowing, play, and knowing, you are FREE! You are free to be Love expressed as the divine shine you truly be!
The playful, prayerful video vlog @ New Thought Families has the mermaid song with some video footage of the sea and a meditation invitation. You can also just go there with these words and your imagination. Sit right down and hear the waves in your mind. Drop into the space in your heart and soul that is always longing to bring you home. Home to yourself, home to the One, home with the whole. Listen to the rhythm of the waves coming to shore. Always in the flow, sometimes high and sometimes low. Yet always home. Our seas are such a masterpiece of divinity and so are we, my friends! Namaste flowing knowing of divine shine!
I greet you with gratitude and a prayerful, playful attitude of embracing this messy life! I join you in sending a prayer for divine order restitution to Maui and all other places in this world where people are both suffering and banding together to help.
In the sea of infinite possibilities, how does this divine timing moment find you? Hopefully you are able to see yourself and your life with the heart of compassionate Love and the clarity of infinite possibilities!
In the all too often chaotic collective we are one with, it can be a tall order to live with such clarity and positivity. I just posted the vlog below that speaks to alchemy, divinity, and divine order. I speak to you from my heart on the front porch with some playful sea friends, ukulele, and song. If you are called, come on over, take a deep dive ~ and sing along!
I continue to breathe in the reverence of divine order’s perfection in an ongoing process that says clean up, show up, listen up, and Love UP!
Yes, I am still breathing through my Spirit blow hole this Sacred Sunday and diving into the wondrous world of whales! Some of the serious work play I mentioned last Sacred Sunday with Feature Creature Teachers Whale, Narwhal, Dolphin ~ ALL whales ~ remains in process and not yet launched. I did finish and publish the new Laurie StorEBook Nana Narwhal’s Knitting @ Laurie’s Stories if you want to read/see it in ETV. This was no small feat! Woo hoo! Still fully honoring that, it is, indeed complete. It’s been on the (loooong) list since 2016!
I have had another round of clarity on how my vision is SO much faster than the flow of daily human energy. And! What a wonder my existing energies ARE with all I AM able to do! And oh how the gremlin part of me wants to say “See, I told you that you can’t, you’re not enough!” Ya, that old habitual look at the impossibilities instead of seeing with positivity the infinite possibilities ~ with joy and gratitude! I am seeing with increasing clarity the need of continual alchemy between my visionary divinity and human reality. As I surmise and alchemize, I feel the crabbies as they reappear and retreat, tempering it all with compassionate, unconditional Love as I keep affirming divine order and choosing positivity. I sing my song!:
I possess positivity for infinite possibilities. I am positive all is possible! While some practice practicalities, I prescribe to positivity. Potentiality of prayer persists inside my heart. And! I positively do my part. I prepare. I pray. I proclaim. I play! And I persistently practice presence to potentiality and possibilities every day! Positivity of possibilities, positivity of possibilities… It’s all possible … I’m positive.
I sing this song in the beginning and end of this Week’s Sacred Sunday vlog @ New Thought Families:
Irrespective of you sharing the vlog experience, I offer you 3 alchemical activities with questions for this week should they resonate as something that could benefit you and your soul’s journey:
1. Ask the eyes of your heart to see the divine order of your lifetime. As you look back and look forward, what is a thread of alchemy that runs through your tapestry? This will be a predominent theme (s). (For me, spirituality and creativity.)
2. Wherever you need to see the divine order of this theme in your life, put it in the center of any situation, past, present, future. You can ask, “How did this, or will this (ex. creativity) help me live my soul’s purpose?”
3. Say a prayer or otherwise center in the Divine, Source by any name. You may want to do this with angels, angel cards or other tools you relate to. Ask to see a missing piece to a question or life challenge where you need clarity. If you get an immediate answer, great! Live with it, and allow it to keep expanding. If no answer readily appears, trust that the clarity is coming and release it. Choose a grateful affirmation you can employ going forward to remind yourself that it is done. Ex. : “Thank you Holy Creator for helping me see with more clarity.” I say with certainty, your allowance of divinity will bring you more clarity! Blessed Be!
I wish you the best in whatever your quest and in always knowing you are blessed!
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!
New Thought Families 
