They're playing your song

by Alan Cohen

www.alancohen.com

" When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They recognize that every soul has its own vibration that expresses its unique flavor and purpose. When the women attune to the song, they sing it out loud. Then they return to the tribe and teach it to everyone else. When the child is born, the community gathers and sings the child’s song to him or her.

There is something inside each of us that knows we have a song, and we wish those we love would recognize it and support us to sing it... If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them. The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another.

A friend is someone who knows your song and sings it to you when you have forgotten it. Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused. "

"Life is showering its gifts upon us at this very moment. There is a force of love and light that is streaming, rushing, pouring toward us from all angles at all times. All we have to do is to let it in. Blessings are being offered to all of us without condition or limit. It's all already given to us. The keys to the Kingdom are ours whenever we are willing to accept them. What we have to lose is fear, lack, limitation, and sorrow. What we have to gain is peace of mind, success, health, and love. We do not need to become anything that we are not already. We need only say, "Yes!" to what the Universe would just love to give to us..."

~ Alan Cohen

---Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. ---Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. ---The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing. ---The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens. ---The only journey is the one within.


~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Dreaming

"I dreamed I spoke in another's language,
I dreamed I lived in another's skin,
I dreamed I was my own beloved,
I dreamed I was a tiger's kin.

I dreamed that Eden lived inside me,
And when I breathed a garden came,
I dreamed I knew all of Creation,
I dreamed I knew the Creator's name.

I dreamed--and this dream was the finest--
That all I dreamed was real and true,
And we would live in joy forever,
You in me, and me in you."

— Clive Barker (Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War)

Spaces

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Kahlil Gibran

INSIDE GRAY GARDENS

...Then there was the garden, named by former owner Anna Gilman Hill, author of "Forty Years of Gardening." We had to take everyone's word that there was actually a garden there. Happily we found Hill's book and a cache of old photographs showing the garden as it originally was, surrounded by dunes, just a few yards from the sea. "It was truly a gray garden," Hill wrote in her book. "The soft gray of the dunes, cement walls and sea mists gave us our color scheme as well as our name." She allowed "only flowers in pale colors" inside the walls.

From

How I Fell in Love With Grey Gardens

Sally Quinn

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 16, 2009

This captivating place ~with gorgeous photos~ inside Gray Gardens, before and after from the New York times, Homes and Gardens...The Secret Gardener

Honey and Orange Blossoms

Yesterday I went to preview a house for sale, the house looks tired and in dire need of TLC, but the backyard has this amazing little space, a secluded corner with broken cobblestones and an old forgotten rose garden, the place is overgrown with vines that climbed up to the trees forming a king of canopy. When I went under the the orange tree, I was taking by a jolt of memories so intense, I nearly cried...what an amazing feeling, it was the sweet aroma of the orange blossoms, the same aroma I remember from my grandmother's garden and I felt embraced in an aura of protection and if not for the fact that we were there to view the house and in a hurry, I would have sat in the very same spot to meditate.

I wonder if there are points of contact like a vortex in our every day time, where we can enter the other world dimension of days gone by...I long to go to my childhood home, like a ghost I would step back in time and visit my grandmothers garden, entering her kitchen, I see myself watching her move around cooking and doing all those things she did so well...she was a wonderful grandmother and my days were always full of her energy, she is in my mind like a busy bee who enters my present days leaving me with the sweet aroma of Spring blossoms and honey.

Moon Gardens

These paintings were inspired by my mother, she is always in search for a new technique and while talking about decoupage and collage, I got so charged up with her ideas that I went for it myself...these were all canvases I had started a while ago...I have many of these around. The base had various degrees of texture, some were going to be landscapes, I had a couple of seascapes too.
The process was a tad complicated because I had to try many layers before I got the desired look, but here they are...I called the series Moon Gardens...a Raven Song.

"Ravens are master magicians and represent transformational energy, revealing to us how to rid ourselves of our inner fears. Raven will show you how to go within in yourself, into the dark areas and then illuminate them, making you ‘sparkle’ and bringing out your true self. Inner conflicts should then be resolved, however long buried they are - this is the deepest healing..."

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