Category: encouragement to foster growth and love

Thoughts and ideas to support others in their quest to be of value to the world.

An important trio.

An important trio.

by kimberly gruber ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Do everything possible to try and stay positive. This often involves looking at things in a new way. While we can be comforted by tradition and allow that to be our safety net at times, we need to look around for other nets when the one that held us before starts to develop some holes. Things change and life has a way of reminding us that we can make the most of a bad situation or cover up and burrow. Doing everything possible to remain in the light may cause you to squint, but it’s in this light that you see things in a new way. It’s new, it could be uncomfortable, but you’re also given the option of seeing things you’ve never seen before. You can visit a whole new place in a familiar space by just choosing to look around and notice. Dust dancing on a beam of light can be beautiful to watch or can become a reminder that it’s time to pick up the dust rag. Cleaning doesn’t usually bring about a sense of wonder. But finding beauty in an unlikely place does. Slip into being positive every now and again. It’s not a denial of reality, it’s a respite from it when reality gets too hard to hold.

Do everything possible to try and stay hopeful. There is a place inside your head that dreams and imagines. It cannot be contained if you allow it to flow. It will approach a situation with an openness and a belief that something might work. Hold onto those pictures inside your head and tuck them away for safekeeping. These are your seeds of hope. Not everything that happens to you is a result of purely external forces you cannot control. What you tell yourself about the world and all that’s possible is within your control and drives you to take action or not. Your hope and belief that the stars do align sometimes when you put yourself out into the world with a hope and a prayer is what moves you to hold on. Believe, remain hopeful and work hard. Hope cannot work without your active participation. It has to be nurtured and protected from all the negative chatter be it from inside or outside your own head. Hope also requires action, movement and a ton of courage. Work with hope tucked in your pocket trusting that the dots will connect and the trajectory towards your dreams will never be a straight line. Slip into feeling hopeful and let the next thing you do, or say, or think indicate that things will be more than okay.

Do everything possible to try and stay grateful. It’s easy to fall into the trap of dwelling on a single negative event even when you are surrounded by good things too. Fight to forge a new path. Picture your many thoughts as branches of a huge tree. You certainly could cling to that single branch and park yourself in a spot that offers a single, terrible view. Or…you could continue to climb off in another direction and take in the view from another angle. Now you’re moving! You can choose to be grateful for the new perspective, your movement, your courage, possibilities and all the loving creatures who support you as you climb and meander. Being grateful for every step you take and never minimizing all the good things that happen everyday, will keep you from hanging out on a branch to nowhere. Slip into feeling grateful for all that you are and all the beauty you bring to this world. You have the courage to scale new branches and see all that is working and all that is beautiful and how you fit into that magic. It’s all because you took notice and slipped on the coat of positivity, hope and gratitude. Wear it proudly and keep on climbing.

Questions/activities to ponder or good journal prompts!

  1. What destroys your ability to stay positive?
  2. Look around your space and notice something different. Are you able to find a path towards wonder?
  3. Hope doesn’t come fully alive without your active participation. What can you do to keep your hope alive?
  4. Can you get focused on what you lack as opposed to what you have? Why or why not?
  5. What new path are you dreaming of forging? How will positivity, hopefulness and gratitude support you on your quest?
Shed your skin.

Shed your skin.

by kimberly gruber ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I swim in the muck of the difficult either waiting for the tide to change or until I muster the strength to swim up and out. It hurts, it’s tiring and strips me raw. But in this space, I notice that I lose all the scales that protect me from the outside world. I shed my skin. I am delicate and sensitive to any and all elements. And it’s ok. Because the scales that cover my body and keep me safe block my view sometimes too. What I’ve accumulated to mask the vulnerable parts of me needs to fall away so I can see what I’m missing. And as my tender body emerges, I stretch and grow and groan as my new skin takes hold. Maybe it will be less thick this next time around. All I know is that I don’t want it to be so layered that it limits my view of the world and all that matters. I don’t want it to be so thick that it keeps me locked inside and unable to shine my light.

In rawness, I catch a glimpse of the sun coming up and I cry thankful for this morning, this moment. In rawness, I see more miracles and beauty. I see more of God. I am closer to that home where my soul lived before. I feel so intensely when I am raw. It can force me to cry out for help or cry out in awe of the beauty placed before my unencumbered eyes. I have lost my scales so everything is tender, but I see things too as if for the first time. Not being fully armored and protected, beauty is intensified. What my eyes pull in rushes through my body and fills every cell with heaven’s strength. The beauty of a tree reaching towards the sky, the stars, the sun and the voice of a child gets imprinted on every cell of my body. I notice these things because I don’t have the strength to let anything pull me from the now. Rawness leaves me sprawled on the floor and too weak to do nothing more than just be. I have shed my scales. I am rebuilding. In rawness I’m thirsty for relief so I easily drink in God’s elixir of healing in the form of the beauty all around me. A beauty that would go unnoticed had I not shed my protective layers and fallen to the ground weak and vulnerable. Only in this place, do I get real glimpses of heaven. Those views are what allow me to pull myself from the muck and start again.

Raw states come in many colors. In rawness I have screamed and not shown my better self. I’ve left messes on the floor or tried to repair the damage I’ve done. If I’ve left the mess, for sure I’ve gathered more scales. I can come up with a million excuses to justify my behavior or my fear and avoid repair. Those excuses become more scales. They protect me from bearing my soul, being uncomfortable or getting hurt. They keep me from recognizing that I am a human who makes mistakes and it is ok. It’s not about fairness, it’s about looking at my pieces in the puzzle of human interaction and what keeps me and another from connecting or making things right. Repair creates connection. In a raw state I have to emerge unprotected to meet someone else who I hope is brave enough to emerge unprotected too. The ruptures we create and the messes we make will never be cleaned up by superficially dusting off each other’s scales. We have to show what’s underneath. Rawness is the place where the real work begins.

In rawness I feel love and gratitude more deeply too. It moves me to reach out, be vulnerable and ask for help. What have I got to lose? I have no skin. I need the support of people in my life until my new growth takes hold. I say “Yes” because there’s no escaping the fact that I need help. When thickly layered with all my scales I usually say, “No, I’m fine!” when someone offers a hand. The rawness drives me to let others tend to me, take care of me and their love reminds me I am deserving even when I don’t feel it sometimes. I am grateful for the salve to my tender skin and the many hands that have fostered my healing. I feel love and gratitude for the angels that want to help and connect because they know rawness too. In this place, they share their gifts and they gather gifts. We are magnificently designed to receive the gift of a more meaningful life when in the service of loving others. Allowing someone to love me helps us both. The drops of love that fall on me cycle back into the earth and always find their way back to the ones who created the drops in the first place.

I’ll shed my skin and stay tender for a bit. I’ll lift my head up just enough to notice how different things look from this vantage point. There’s nothing covering me, my vision or my ears. I am being reborn and growing new skin. A thin protective layer is essential for my survival but I want to make sure I shed the skin I’ve outgrown. If my skin restricts me, it will be impossible for me to take chances in life and in love. A life of meaning is built by showing what’s underneath your scales once in a while. I will wriggle out of what binds me and sit in that tender place for a bit letting angels take care of me while I heal. I will drink in the beauty that shows up in its many forms to remind me to hold on, grow and be grateful. That’s always better then continuing to live restricted by my own skin and the weight of all my scales.

Questions/activities to ponder or good journal prompts!

  1. Recall a time when you were raw. What led to that moment? What do you remember feeling at that time?
  2. Have you ever noticed beauty at a time when you’ve been stripped down to the core? Why or why not?
  3. In rawness we can have reactionary responses. How difficult is it for you to repair if you’ve made a mess and why?
  4. Most people are driven to help when they see a need. What prevents us from doing so?
  5. A life of love and meaning requires connection, sharing and “showing what’s under our scales”. Why don’t we do this more often?
Do things to stay human.

Do things to stay human.

by kimberly gruber ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Truth, honesty and compromise have been carved up on the butcher block lately. Treating others inhumanely is the new normal for some people too. Creating lies, false stories and belittling others while people stand by and watch it happen is no longer shocking. The bully plants the seeds of hate, fear and intimidation and the bystanders say nothing because they are petrified that the bully will go after them. They lack courage and keep their mouths shut. They allow the bully to spread fear and use aggression causing someone to be stripped of their rights, respect and dignity. The bully who fans these flames knows what he is doing. He plants the cancer cell, lets it spread and watches. He counts on his peers to say nothing, do nothing and let bad things happen. The bystanders who let the bully exercise his very limited skill set to harness his “power over” technique are the most troubling to watch. They allow the cancer to grow. They watch while someone gets shoved into a locker, laugh along with the bully and do nothing. Their fear of the bully overrides their courage to do what’s right. This is middle school 101.

Fear does serve a purpose. It alerts us to open our eyes, become aware, fact check and take action. It drives us to analyze what is going on and do something about it. Fear is part of who we are to keep us safe and to push us towards keeping others safe. We feel safer when banded with others in a common purpose and goal. The issue is to look at that group goal and question if your membership creates more fear, provokes more aggression and fans the fuel of more hatred. If you’re an individual or a group that intimidates others by exploiting fear in the world to garner a sense of power, you’re only doing so in an attempt to eradicate your own fear and your own shortcomings. Bullies are not actualized humans. They are humans that spend too much time living in fear instead of looking at it’s source. If you can’t figure out why you’re afraid, you can’t actively work to solve the problem.

The courageous voices for justice do not fear change, compromise, diversity or having hard conversations. They may be scared sometimes, but their drive to do the right thing overrides their fear. What they do fear is apathy. This is why they keep their eyes open, learn and become aware. They spend time with people who are different and notice what connects us as human beings more so than what separates us. They exercise temperance, patience and they listen to the stories of others. They know that spending time together and doing what humans do, is the best way to dispel fear and build connection. “I see me in you” is the fully human motto. If I see you are hurting, I am driven to action to support you even if our thinking doesn’t align all the time. I will howl like a wolf to protect you as I know your survival and our pack requires that I do not let one rabid wolf take us all down. After all, we just laughed, played and ate together last week. We each have our own story and a story of our time together. How can I be scared of you when we each have a chapter that comes from the same book? Preserving this book allows us to exist in harmony. Open your mouth when someone comes along and tries to censor individual chapters. Because we all know that when you strip chapters from the book of humanity, the whole thing falls apart.

When I hear you, I see you. When you hear me, you see me. It’s called bonding. It requires person to person interaction. Give someone the opportunity to reveal their humanity – their story, their words, their smile, their anger. It could get scary. Especially when you are at odds with their ideology. Pause and remember what trying humans do – they breathe and listen. Ask more questions. Listen and learn. It is likely when the misinformation starts to fly, you’ll see it’s based in fear. Ask about that fear. That’s the best you can do. Oh and hope too. Hope that they somehow saw you and noted that you’re not that scary. Hopefully, they somehow noticed that you do have a little bit in common because you each took the time share individual chapters. That’s how you bond, connect and preserve each other’s humanity. Start one person at a time. Larger organizations can’t come close to having the affect you may have on helping to foster connection and healing one person at a time. Be part of the pack that tries their best, despite how hard it is, to gather more into the human race.

When you walk down a particular hallway of the Holocaust museum, you are surrounded by the shoes that were stripped from people as they entered the concentration camps. The effect is a stark reminder of our connection to those souls. We all wear something on our feet. The shoes belonged to humans that laced, or buttoned or slipped on their shoes that morning. Or the shoes belonged to little ones who had someone help them do the buckling and lacing that day. Either way, those shoes protected the feet of the human they carried doing the best they can to survive the horror of what they faced. It was apathy and a disconnection with one’s humanity and the humanity of another that led to the death of all those shoe-wearing people. It was silence concerning the “small” things that led to the big things like the murder of millions of adults, children and babies. Imagine yourself in those shoes. Then decide if howling in the name of defending someone else’s humanity is one of the most important and courageous things you can do. Because it is.

Questions/activities to ponder or good journal prompts!

  1. Most individuals have been the victim of someone else exercising power over them? What did that feel like? How did you resolve the issue?
  2. Have you ever exercised power over another? Does seeing a bully as having a “very limited skill set” speak to you whether or not you were an offender or victim or both? In what way?
  3. Have you ever connected with someone with whom you had many differences by way of a conversation, a story or a meal? Did you notice any similarities despite your differences? Why or why not?
  4. Fear is what leads to misinformation spreading and believing without experience or facts. What might the liar, manipulator or the uneducated be afraid of? What unknown about a person or group triggers fear in you and why?
  5. The shoes of the holocaust victims are meant to evoke empathy and reveal just how powerful misinformation, lies, apathy and hate can be. How does that museum display speak to you? What does it call you to do?
Be a sunrise.

Be a sunrise.

by kimberly gruber ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Where are you in your own life? What part are you playing because you have been hurt, taken advantage of or told you are not enough? What will it take to remind yourself that you do have choices, you do have the ability to think outside of the prison walls in your own mind? Whether you put up the walls because of hurt inflicted upon you or by choice, there’s a reason these walls exist. Exploration of why these walls were built is important, but so is knowing that these walls can be scaled, climbed or chipped away piece by piece because you have made the choice to do so. You start by deciding to be an active participant in your own life by noticing every choice you make. Picking up the rope and pic ax to break down what keeps you captive may feel excruciatingly difficult, but it’s where you start and starting is a choice. With every decision you make you are exercising your power and how you will bring about change in your own life. When someone has taken away a choice of yours, that doesn’t mean they’ve taken away all of you, all of your choices. It means that for a moment in time, a decision was made for you that you never agreed upon. That decision that someone made for you changed your life, but cannot take away your ability to choose how you move forward from that moment and how you choose to navigate the world around you. It can be hard to remember that when you are scared, pissed, frozen, regretful, anxiety-ridden, deeply sorrowful and in a heap of madness on the shower floor. It’s hard to feel that you have any choice and any power. But you chose to get up and get in the shower and that is how you start. You start by noticing and moving.

So where is your power, your balm and your healing? It’s in you. This trio of inner strength is made up of your body, your mind and your spirit. They are your people, your power and there to love you, help you heal and grow. That trio is always whispering to you when a whisper is all you can take. When you’re ready, the trio will shout at you sometimes too. Getting into the flow that your trio offers may be tough. It requires stepping up and out. The key is to not feel defeated by whatever the trio calls you to do before the event even begins. Your role is to flow down the river they set forth and believe that it will take you to a place where you will begin to feel safe again. The trio is asking you to surrender to your body’s reactions, your mind’s recall and the emotional release of all you are holding. They are asking you to trust in a process that hurts like hell, feels scary and out of control at a time in your life when it’s hard to trust in yourself and your own ability to breathe without pain. Believe, hold on and know this is part of your healing. Your body, mind and spirit knows that healing begins with trusting yourself first before you take the leap and trust others again. When you come out the other side of facing your pain and the emotional release that must ensue, you discover that you have the ability to heal by relying on your choices and the sacred temple that houses your mind and light. You have the power to heal and be healed even when the pain leads you to believe otherwise.

Healing a deep wound requires you make the choice to move and live your life no matter how messy and hard that can be. It’s ok to choose to stay behind your walls sometimes as long as it’s not the only thing you do. Your body, mind and spirit will support you in your healing, but the trio requires your choice to participate. It is a choice to believe, dive in, let go, trust, surrender, walk, run, shower and work towards healing. This may feel impossible, but that is the trio’s specialty – helping you do the unthinkable, the impossible and the unimaginable. Your body, mind and spirit will always guide you to notice your power, pain and the choices you have to deal with whatever you are carrying. Healing and re-birth is a miracle and you have the opportunity to be a witness to that in your own life. Breathe deeply and move so you can get back on stage and assume the main role in your life’s story. Your body, mind and spirit will love you, heal you and carry you if you listen to what it calls you to do. Try to marvel at all the wisdom contained in you. You have more choice, power and strength then you ever could have imagined. These are things that can never be taken from you. Ever.

Love is an act of will, a choice, a movement. True living is too. It’s no coincidence to me that sometimes when I intend on typing the word “love”, I accidentally hit the letter “i” instead of the letter “o” and end up with the word “live” in my writing. The letter “i” is right next to the letter “o” on our keyboards and I’m glad they’re neighbors. Live and love are kind of interchangeable. The word “live” and “love” are similar in nature in that both involve your active participation. If I choose to really live my life, it is an act of will, a choice, a movement just like love. Real living requires I try my best to make a conscious effort to do the things that really matter and that always involves love – love of others, the Divine, passions, self and nature as a start. Real living means I will have pain but it also means I will have more love. I have to believe in life and love to fully participate in the miracle of my own healing and to support others in their healing as well. I can courageously choose to rely on my body, mind and spirit as given to me by the Divine, to build a life from the ashes, start over and live again.

Live, breathe and keep it moving the best you can in a direction that will create more love and more self-compassion. Your world may have stopped, become painful and feel out of control. Life and love is here to remind you that is for now, not forever. Despite how broken we feel, we witness the sun coming up every morning as a reminder that it’s possible to begin again and that the darkness will eventually fade away. Moving upward into the sky takes some serious work, but you can become a miraculous living, loving sunrise too. You will shine again.

Questions/activities to ponder or good journal prompts!

  1. Have you built walls as a form of self-protection? What are you hiding and/or protecting and why?
  2. What are your thoughts about the trio inside you? (Body/Mind/Spirit) Do you rely on this trio day-to-day? Why/why not?
  3. Rising from the ashes may feel impossible. Have you done so before? If yes, how? What gave you the strength to rebuild?
  4. Take the time to think about all the choice you have versus the choices you did not or cannot choose. How does that affect your sense of power or the agency you have in your own life?
  5. The word “live” and “love” are similar in nature in that both involve your active participation. Expand on this idea.
A million canaries.

A million canaries.

by kimberly gruber ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Every part of your life matters. Every moment of your existence is meaningful. Every opportunity you work so hard for and every opportunity that falls into your lap is a chance to do something wonderful or learn a hard lesson. Your life is made up of pages that will become the book about you. It will contain all that you’ve learned as you make your way in this place. The spirits that ushered you from heaven to earth nudged you to begin chapter one upon your arrival. The first page is a story of celebration and how nature and all its creatures danced and rejoiced when you made your grand entrance. It’s a party like none other meant to leave an impression on your heart so you never stop writing your story. All this day one hoopla is there to help you remember how much the Divine loves every part of who you are so chapter one is pretty important. It’s there for you to read again and again when you fall or when this world hurts you. You’ll always be worth more than all the stars in the universe. It’s all there on page one! It can never be censored, edited or crossed out by you, anyone or anything in this world.

Life’s journey is about remembering and recording the pages of your life. The details matter, your relationships matter, your struggles and triumphs matter, the process of your life matters. These are the things you collect in your book that teach you how to handle what comes next or to help you support those experiencing writer’s block and stumbling to move on. Reflecting on each page in your life and learning from your experiences is what makes us wise. If we get stuck in a particular chapter, it usually means we could use some help from other authors or we need to put down our pen, rest and think for a while. It could mean that we’re writing our book based on what others tell us should be on each page. Gather your own moments and be on the look out for what makes your book beautiful. Don’t rely on the world to tell your story. If you do so, your chapters will be superficial, anxiety ridden, boring, chronically sad and empty in spirit. Tear those pages up. Do your research and dig deeply for the real you, the beautiful you, the you that has a true story to tell. The you that arrived on a party bus! Every lesson you’ve learned, every chance you took, every collapse to the floor and every time you shared your light and held another will be written on your heart. Your book will become a marvelous story filled with relationships, love, miracles, challenges, successes and failures. The beautiful story you compose will make for a fantastic, one-of-a-kind read. It will teach and influence everyone you meet if it tells the story of who you really are. That’s how you pass on wisdom to those caught in dark chapters or how you help yourself recover when words cannot be found.

Writing our book is a process and the process matters. How are you learning, growing and finding a way to love every piece of your life that makes up the whole of your story? What are you noticing, who are you spending time with, how are you holding on, climbing up and doing the best you can to live a life worth living? Each piece of the puzzle and how all these pieces fit together define who we are, what we’ve learned and how we’ve loved or backed away from love. We don’t arrive, we keep moving, keep growing and as we do, our life becomes more interesting even when we put down the pen and run. Spectrums of light and darkness making up the pages of our book keep us engaged and wanting to know more about the wonder of who we are and the wonder of all living creatures that make up the whole.

How we grow, adapt and learn requires taking one step at a time and each step matters. It’s how we eventually learn to crawl, walk, run and feel so much joy we dance by ourselves under the stars at night. Every experience you have grows into the story of you like a single grain of sand that is part of a beautiful beach or a single leaf that makes up a majestic tree. Each element, piece, fragment and thread matters to the beauty of the whole. We are a speck; we are the whole world. Our story is comprised of each letter and the whole book. We are a single canary loved just for being and loved for the part we play in the flock of flying color. Re-read the first page in your book when the journey gets tough. It will remind you that no matter where you are in your story, you will always matter to the One who sent you. Write that all over your heart so you live a life that exemplifies your true worth and are an active participant in the moment-by- moment creation of you. Share some lessons and love too. This way, your story will never end.

Questions/activities to ponder or good journal prompts!

  1. Close your eyes and breathe in and out. Now imagine heaven and nature celebrating the arrival of you. What does it look like? What does it feel like?
  2. The Divine expressed a deep, deep love for a single canary and loves you even more than a million canaries. How might you connect with that love? Maybe start by noticing all the feathers you find if you stay open to seeing them.
  3. How does it come to be that we allow others to write our story? What does that feel like? What does it feel like to take back our own pen?
  4. There’s opportunity found in the simplest of moments and wisdom is gathered when we reflect on each step of our journey. Do you focus more on the process or just the end result? Why/why not?
  5. You are a speck or the whole world, a grain of sand or the beach, a leaf or the tree, a single letter or a book. What does this idea of being a piece of a beautiful whole mean to you?

Paths of light.

Paths of light.

by kimberly gruber ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Moving forward can be hard sometimes. We can get tied to our past making it difficult to take the next step into uncharted territory. It feels safer and easier when you’re familiar with the terrain even when it causes you pain. We are creatures of habit that find comfort being in that cart that remains fixed to the track so we don’t have to think too much. Thoughts may become embedded in the tracks and grooves of our brain and flow through us without our permission all the time. These thoughts may remind us of our worth or tell us we are not enough. They tell us to stay steadfast or tell us to run in fear. These grooved paths may be bordered by light or drain the light out of us.

Thought grooves originate from our past and how we chose to handle experiences or how we were taught to handle experiences. Patterns of thoughts repeatedly reinforced by us or by others determine the depths of our grooves. Humans tend to fall in line looking for the same paths to make sense of our environment. This is great when the thoughts are true and we believe them. Give me the paths of “You Are Worthy”, “You Can Do This” and “You Are Amazing” all day long. These routes are lined with angels of faith that illuminate the path for us and guide us to our next life adventure. The path of fear and self doubt are slippery, dark and painful. When we travel these grooved paths, we often tumble down the rabbit hole of shame littered with anxiety, worry, over-thinking, sadness and regret. It’s tiring, lonely, all-consuming and takes our focus away from all the possibility and new trailheads beckoning us all the time. It’s too dark on this path to see the truth of our potential and all that could be.

I want to install stop signs at the entrances of all the paths that only reinforce the lies, darkness and pain embedded in my brain. But to do so, I have to explore my past to learn why I choose this path despite knowing it doesn’t ever serve me. It means I practice mercy, understanding and forgiveness starting with myself. It means I’m going to need a good breakfast, a compass, band aids, a strong body and mind to climb out of the deep grooves of doubt that I traveled on for way too long. It may feel like climbing up a mountain in high heels for a bit, but I know there will be hiking boots at the summit waiting for my arrival. The angels of faith leave them there to provide comfort for the weary travelers who are ready to create new paths of thoughts and behaviors. There is always enough light, encouragement, love, and provisions on the well-grooved path called, “You Are Capable”.

Let go of your past so you can keep your focus on what’s going on right in front of you. Mind the stop signs and pump the brakes to avoid deepening the grooves of self-doubt. Hold hands with others in jubilation and anticipation of where the paths of light may lead you both. Use your hands to wipe away the sweat of those who just climbed out of the deep grooves of darkness. Keep an eye out for things that knock you off track and pepper them with the bug spray called, “I am Capable”. Keep it moving, rest once in awhile and use the map of truth that leads to amazing lookouts. Never jump the track when you’re on the well-worn, deeply grooved path of positivity. It may be hard to stay on track sometimes as we can be easily enticed by our darker, habitual path of lies. Stand guard and remind yourself that the hiking boots of light have the ability to keep you grounded in the present and lead you to amazing places. The angels of faith are waiting on you with more provisions to keep you going and are ready to celebrate your arrival.

Questions/activities to ponder or good journal prompts!

  1. Think of a thought or behavior groove that you get caught up in that does not serve you. Why is it so difficult to break away or jump that track?
  2. Fear and doubt are dark paths. How has this path kept you from seeing your full potential?
  3. Do you travel the path of “You are Capable”? What can you do to regularly stay on this path? What knocks you off this course?
  4. How will you practice the habit of installing “STOP” signs at the entrances of those paths that bring about fear and doubt? Is there a mantra you might recite when you start to travel into darkness?
  5. Have you ever “hiked a mountain in high heels” but kept it moving? What encouraged you to keep going?

Seeds of light.

Seeds of light.

by kimberly gruber ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I am naturally drawn to nature. If you want to learn anything about life, study the home the Divine created for us. One of the most beautiful things to witness is its constant state of renewal and adaptation. The organisms that have lived out their purpose melt into the ground leaving the best of themselves in the soil for the next life to come along and gobble up the treasure. Nothing is wasted. What is not good to pass along to the next generation forces adaptation. Species adjust to their environment to become stronger and more tolerant of what’s going on in the world around them. It’s amazing to consider what nature continues to show us every day. If only we’d stop, look and listen.

Seeds of light come in all different packages. When someone treats us with love or kindness that seed of love could be just the thing we need to direct us toward the light or help us hold on until the wind dies down. Plant those seeds right back into the ground and pray for sunshine and rain so those plants grow exponentially. But what about those seeds that require advanced horticultural skills? Some seeds of light hit us like laser beams. They are words, actions or situations that demand we adapt to new ways and be directed by our own decision-making instead of at the whim of our environment. I would rather be a hearty sunflower than a tumbleweed blown around by the wind of others just bouncing off of the same rocks. These seeds force us to look at our garden, clear out the rocks and weed it to make room for new growth. These seeds can push us to reconsider how we do things. These seeds of light demand attention so they can grow into new ideas or new ways of living. You get dirty working with these seeds because when we grow from pain, it often requires some serious digging.

Pain is a seed of light and our pain can drive us to grow beautiful things. The light pushes us to make positive changes that benefits us as a species. Even when fire demolishes forests, new growth is fueled by all the ashes. When these seeds of light hit us, it is usually a wake up call. It’s a call that usually screams, “Ask for help”, “Let this decompose” and “Buckle up and get ready for new growth”. These seeds can do things like drive us to become more self-aware about what we need to flourish. As we become more aware we are able to healthfully adapt to our environment. We know how to reach towards the light, drop leaves that don’t serve us and learn better ways to weather the storms.

If we don’t adapt and grow, we will feel left behind, lonely and stagnant. That is not nature’s way. Pain is a seed of light that can drive us to grow beautiful things. Love is a seed of light too that when planted, shines brighter than the sun. Plant all the seeds that come from the light. Say kind things, apologize, comfort and have those conversations that can hurt sometimes. Not all seeds are easy to grow and take time. Sometimes the soil is rocky and the weeds can be tough to manage but if you fertilize these new seeds with love, self-awareness and patience, you’re garden will always be growing. Tend your garden with loving kindness for yourself and all the flowers around you. Bloom my friend.

Questions/activities to ponder or good journal prompts!

  1. Recall a time when you were in an “environment” or a time in your life that caused great discomfort. How did you adapt? Was it a healthy form of adaptation?
  2. Have you ever considered pain “a seed of light”? Do you see this “seed of light” as a nudge from the Divine? Why or why not?
  3. Lately, have you been a hearty sunflower moving towards the light or a tumbleweed? What does is feel like to not be a part of your own decision-making?
  4. What “leaves” do you need to drop and why?
  5. “Pain can drive us to do beautiful things”. What does this statement mean to you?