Inspiration for Setting Intentions!

I thought some of you might appreciate this as an inspiration for setting your intentions and how to work with it during the 40 days!

Question: I'm in a place where 15 minutes is a big commitment, but I think it is the medicine I need. Can you offer some tips on setting an intention? I am wondering how broad or narrow it should be... For example, do you recommend one focus on healing a specific injury or on loving and respecting the body's needs?

Answer: What a fantastic question! Because it's a 40-day process I tend to encourage people to go with the bigger intentions to leave space for all sorts of insights to come to the surface that otherwise might be hidden.
It sounds like you really want to focus on the body, so perhaps the activity you could commit to would be something physically nurturing - 15 mins of self-massage, a hot bath, a nourishing walk etc. It doesn't have to be the same activity every day, it's the commitment that's important.
Through focusing your energy in a loving way, you get to see what blocks you - old/limiting beliefs, negative emotions about yourself, patterns of avoidance and so on.
Once we have engaged with these old patterns and faced them honestly, it becomes much easier to choose whether they really serve us or not. If not, we can ask for support and divine guidance to let them go and create something nourishing and NEW!

Translating the Touch of the Divine

Translating the touch of the divine into a word, a sentence, a paragraph is an art indeed.  You have awoken this desire within me and now I yearn to master this alone.  No Mother Tongue can help me here, in Rumi’s field.  There is a rhythm and a Grace to these unfolding words that no language can contain.  Beat down this mind so effectively schooled and open these fingers to your softest touch.  Write through me into forms that another’s eyes may rest upon and in resting, your touch be felt like the gentle morning breeze caressing me awake.  Here there is no space for mastery, mystery alone reveals itself eternally.  I will fail and in the falling your wings alone can carry me home.

Let this life be lived as a gesture unto you, an eternal prostration at your unseen joy and celebration in this unrecognised manifestation.  Those who call you by name are mistaken, for how can one word contain the ever present celebration of life itself.  This wind, those trees, the aching longing of the wave to reach the shore, only to be consumed back into the depths.  These are a travellers ever present  companions, missed in a futile attempt to reach an imaginary land.  How beautifully dost the nightingale sing and the hummingbird flutter to catch your sweet nectar while we in all our intelligence build buildings to house You and imagine we can form you out of stone.  The idol and the dross removed both melt in your sacred container.

Do these words need editing, can creativity sprung from emptiness be moulded into a formally correct and grammatical structure or is it the essence behind the words that catches at our hearts door and throws it open before the warden has a chance to reach for the key?

Can music be limited to the notes in my piano, or colour to the shades in my palette? Can life limit the outpouring of your beauty with a few carefully placed grammatical structures?  Do these words touch you or leave you cold, can your eyes flow effortlessly across the page as your mind is transported to a forgotten realm where all that you imagine disappears as effortlessly as the darkness with the arrival of the dawning sun.  No other purpose exists for these shapes and symbols scratched in the bare earth.  If you dissect and analyze will you touch the mystery that is pointed to or will you focus on the forms and miss the space in which they arise?  Imagine this was written in black ink on black paper, no matter the effort the mind would find no partner for it’s dance of dissection, so put it down and let it rest awhile in the tender embrace of the hearts warm pool and then perhaps, in a moment, you will recognise the love in which all existence dances without end.