Awake | Bonnie Barnard - Part 8

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For Just a Moment

I returned to the Pacific Northwest for a brief moment earlier this month. Driving on roads covered in a blanket of leaves, windshield wipers batting the rain off the glass, pre-mature Christmas music playing louder than my thoughts, I pulled to the side of the road wanting time to stand still. Keenly aware that Life is so much bigger than my wanting; I grabbed my journal and pen and wrote about my desire for time to stand still for a moment. Craving the temporary to change places with the Eternal, knowing that it can’t and won’t. Desperately wanting for the people I love to remain beloved, and forms to not shift. I knew this could not and will not happen, and yet, I was aware of the deep desire within me to own the beautiful familiar … for even just a moment. This Moment Life is now faster than me. I want to possess the land I know will outlive me. Today it’s not enough to stand witness to its beauty and appreciate it. I want...

Freedom FROM and Freedom IN

This past weekend we celebrated the Fourth of July, or our nation’s independence FROM King George’s rule. Our country’s founders declared a new country, a new congress, and a new way of doing governance. A new way grew out of an old idea that no longer fit. We do this all of the time. Everyday individuals decide to become sober as there is a rub between the addicted self and the emerging desired new. There is a past FROM which liberation is the desired goal. Likewise individuals graduate FROM a college or university as an accomplishment has been made and a status change is underway. These are examples of Freedom FROM. The old is in the past, it is being left behind, and the new is being created with each choice, guided by internal wisdom and a lot of seeming serendipitous lure. The focal point of Freedom FROM is circumstance or behavior that is being left behind. To have Freedom IN means the ability to be free regardless of circumstance. This...

How Did You Wake Up This Morning?

Think back to how you woke up this morning. What was the first thought that went through your mind? How did you greet today? What was the first, second, and third action you took? And, did these actions bring you closer to your Soul or push you away from your Self? I have had the rare opportunity this past year to observe the lives of many people close up and personal. These past eight months I’ve been a gypsy rover. I lived mostly in California, some in Arizona, and another chunk in Nevada. I rented out my home and took to the road. I slept on floors, blow up mattresses, guest beds and couches of friends and relatives. I watched first hand how people, other than myself, wake up in the morning. I didn’t think much about it until I worked with a client this week who told me she has the uncanny ability to know how her day will be the minute she wakes up. She believed it to be a...

Chihuly in the Desert

Just as the sun was setting over the desert, I entered the Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, Arizona. The desert wears its own unique beauty and scent and the glass blown art of Dale Chihuly’s team emphasized this beauty. I walked in a garden of inspiration. I turned to my friend and said I felt as though at that very moment; all was right with humanity. I experienced the Beauty of God; the Beauty of Life. I recalled a passage from The Autobiography of a Yogi. “By ignoble whips of pain, man is driven at last into the Infinite Presence, whose beauty alone should lure him.” At that moment I chose to come to the Divine through Beauty consciously, and welcome whatever pain or distress with the energy of Beauty. There is a healing power in Nature and in Color. I allowed myself to open to this. Aware that purple is seen as the Highest Vibrating color in the spectrum and has been deemed as the mystical color,...

Meditation Monday: Prosperity and Plenty

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. Matthew 6:26-29 This past Saturday I joined a group of hundreds to experience the “Lilies of the Valley” consciousness facilitated by Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith. Amidst the spiritual practices and transmission exercises I captured affirmations that were spoken or inspired within my Soul. Allow these words of Truth to inspire your own insights and open the something Greater within you that knows All is God and All is Well. I allow being prosperous to be okay. Prosperity is my norm....

Meditation Monday: Connecting with The NEW

Welcome to a NEW Meditation Monday Meditation. Welcome to the NEW moment in your life. New, improved, fresh, current. New, New, New, New. I love the word new even though it is overused in our culture and typically associated with wanting to sell something. New means something hasn’t been before. As spiritual beings we are constantly living in the energy of NEW as each moment, each now is literally new. It has never existed before and never will again. Our Infinite Self meets the finite self through time and space in form. The form, moment, insight, relationship with life is new at this very moment. Our bodies renew and rebuild themselves constantly. According to www.lifescience.com, red blood cells live for four months and white for over a year. Skin cells live two to three weeks. Colon cells replace themselves every four days and sperm cells every three. Our bodies are doing the ‘new.’ I am keenly aware that this is the first Monday in Lent. Lent is...