Throughout our lives, desire acts as a powerful force, as we infuse our goals with meaning and purpose. Our innate protection mechanisms often stand as barriers, though, hindering our progress and holding us back. How can we integrate effectively these contrasting forces and still move forward successfully? Let us delve into this interplay.

Desire for Success: A Motivational Engine

Desire serves as the fuel that ignites our ambitions, pushing us beyond our comfort zones towards greater growth. Whether it is professional advancement, personal development, or nurturing relationships, our desires are deeply rooted within us. Desire motivates action, fosters resilience, and shapes our visions for a brighter future.

We need more than desire alone to receive success. Strategic planning, perseverance, and taking inspired action steps help us to overcome obstacles along the way.

Protection Mechanisms: Navigating Self-Preservation

In a push-pull relationship with our aspirations, our psyche comes equipped with protective mechanisms aimed at safeguarding our well-being. These mechanisms, ingrained through evolution, manifest as fear of failure, self-doubt, or reluctance to step beyond what is comfortable. While essential for survival, they can also inhibit growth and progress.

Acknowledging these protective instincts is crucial. Awareness allows us to recognize when these safeguards get triggered and yet all the while appreciating their underlying motives.

Achieving Integration: Finding the Balance

To integrate desire and protection effectively, several steps can be taken:

  1. Awareness: Recognize when protective mechanisms are at play and understand their root causes. This awareness empowers us to confront and transcend these barriers.
  2. Be Thankful for the Fear: Rather than allowing fear to paralyze us, view it as a natural response to the unknown. Use fear as a motivator for growth and resilience.
  3. Practice Self-Compassion: Success often involves setbacks. Cultivate self-compassion to navigate challenges with grace and learn from experiences.
  4. Allow Vulnerability: Stepping into vulnerability opens doors to new opportunities. Take risks, acknowledge mistakes, and seek support when needed.

For your consideration:

Visualize it all working out plus visualize yourself taking the incremental steps to get you there. As with a GPS, allow it to be a navigational tool – guiding you turn by turn, toward your intended destination. It is both the journey and the destination that matters. And, remember to leave room for fluidity, for adjustments, if and as conditions change – you always reserve the right to make course corrections.

Living by design, with intention, focused and at ease, can be immensely satisfying.

In the intricate weave of life, balancing our desire for success with our inherent protective instincts is an essential skill. And, it is one that you can cultivate at will. By integrating these contrasting forces, we unlock our full potential and move forward with self-assurance.

Success is not just about reaching goals; it is about embracing the journey with courage and determination. I invite us all to navigate this delicate path with resilience and purpose, moving closer to our aspirations while remaining grateful for the guardrails that aim to keep us from harm.

Okay, your turn:

When have you found yourself fulfilling your aspirations consciously, and doing so despite the fears that inevitably arise when you are taking on a new challenge?

I invite you to share your observations, feelings, and experiences by leaving a Reply in the Comments section, below. Soul-to-soul!

Flow state

Organic ebb and flow

each in sway

Intuition guides our way.

As flowing currents whisper secrets,

within rhythms unseen,

Energy pulses through everything

In the union of intuition and flow, we are free to go

Into the inner sanctums

Where intuition sharpens our solutions

Connected to action, where plans abide.

Flow state fuels the steam,

Unleashing potential, fulfilling our dream.

Energy surges in every task we do,

A fuel for progress, tried and true.

In moments of focus, we harness the force,

Achieving our goals, on our chosen course.

Evolution’s path leads us to innovate,

Nudging us forward, to navigate.

For in the fusion of intuition and flow,

We unlock the keys to success and grow

Stagnant waters breed decay,

A lack of movement in disarray,

Life thrives where currents run,

In the dance of waves beneath the sun.

Okay, your turn:

When do you feel most in synch, most in flow? How do you know when you’ve hit your stride?

I invite you to share your observations, feelings, and experiences by leaving a Reply in the Comments section, below. Soul-to-soul!

© 2024 Lori A. Noonan. All Rights Reserved.

New beginnings

A whisper in the wind

A blank page untouched by time

In the sliver of dawn

Where shadows fall back behind

The horizon line

Faith blooms anew

In the silent space

A promise of what may yet unfold

Among the secrets

Still untold

Like dewdrops on petals

In soft morning light

A dance of potential

With a wiggle of might

New beginnings

Like a canvas wide

Invite us to paint a journey

Much obliged

For in the beat

Between breaths and sighs

Is where the magic quietly resides

Okay, your turn:

New beginnings…love ‘em or dread ‘em? Does it depend? If so, in what ways?

I invite you to share your observations, feelings, and experiences by leaving a Reply in the Comments section, below. Soul-to-soul!

© 2024 Lori A. Noonan. All Rights Reserved.

June’s solstice brings

Tall flowers

and a shower or two

upon the desert

An oasis

is forming

and bubbling

beneath the surface

Oh gathering

solstice

sympathy of souls

When the sun is done

and down

Is it really ever down?

As we honor June’s solstice

may we see its shining

wisdom

among the shadows

peeking out

at us

As we journey through time and space

May the solstice’s gleam

Guide us as we weave our soul’s own dream

And esteem

Gathering steam

On this auspicious occasion

Once an earthly year

Let us smile and behold

In our soul’s delight

And welcome all wonders

seen

and unseen

With all our mighty

fire

and light

Okay, your turn:

What about June’s solstice arises in you? …anything in particular that has come into sharpened view for you this year?

I invite you to share your observations, feelings, and experiences by leaving a Reply in the Comments section, below. Soul-to-soul!

© 2023 Lori A. Noonan. All Rights Reserved.

Gratitude

begets gratitude

It is cyclical

What goes around

comes around

Spiraling

until the lesson

is learned

and

appreciated

for what it is

and for what it is not

Clear

Confident

Blessed

For your consideration:

Taking a moment to step off the merry-go-round, what do you observe about yourself, your life, your growth? Any recurring patterns worth saving? Any worth discarding?

We do get to choose. It is all in the noticing.

Okay, your turn:

What areas of your life are evolving? In what way? When something ‘comes around again,’ do you reflect on what you can do differently?

I invite you to share your observations, feelings, and experiences by leaving a Reply in the Comments section, below. Soul-to-soul!

© 2022 Lori A. Noonan. All Rights Reserved.

Give it a frame

Give it a frame

through which to view

the year

your year

ahead

Never the same

as what may have come

of the year drawing

to a close

May it no longer be tamed

nor reduced to a simple game

To be repeated

ever more

or less so tame

and lame

as to be unwittingly turned away

from all the possibilities

that bring you joy

For your consideration:

When I was the Features editor for my school newspaper, I took great care in selecting from among the many photographs submitted by the photographers, paring down to the very few that most captured the emotions of the moment. The Sports editor, not surprisingly, focused on selecting the most dynamic action shots. It was with intention and a devotion to the story.

The same process can be applied to the new year. As you review all that was (and wasn’t) 2021, what are you bringing with you into 2022, and what are you leaving behind?

I encourage you to give yourself the opportunity to put a frame around the new year. As you would with a painting or a photograph, what are you choosing to put within the frame? What are you bringing into clear focus by framing it as such? And, by design, what are you thereby leaving outside the frame?

Put another way, we speak of the “framers of the Constitution.” The founding fathers — alas no founding mothers at least not officially — deliberately and with intention decided what would be included in, and excluded from, the nation’s foundational charter. (For more on that, follow this link to a previous edition of Soul Notes here.)

It makes a difference where you place the frame.

Okay, your turn:

What is it about the turning of the calendar from one year to the next that excites you? Anything about it that actually instead drives you a bit batty?

Do you approach each year with intention? If not, will you do so this year? Are you willing to give it a try?

I invite you to share your observations, feelings, and experiences by leaving a Reply in the Comments section, below. Soul-to-soul!

© 2022 Lori A. Noonan. All Rights Reserved.

Across the veils

From the center

outward

revolving

evolving

contacting

communicating

relating with

all the relations

Across the veils

so thin

and frail

To avail

myself the opportunity

to connect

with those

who have passed on

to other worlds

across the multiverse

only to converse

in telepathic ways

among the waves

of grief

For your consideration:

When we say someone has passed on, have they really left us, truly?

This time of year, with the observance of Samhain, All Hallows’ Eve, All Souls Day, Day of the Dead, all converging upon early November, the connection with the spirit world is stronger than ever.  I feel it. I lean into it. I blend with it. With each subsequent year, I emerge more and more connected, more and more at peace, with all that was – and all that – is.

Okay, your turn:

Have you lost loved ones, and if so, did the love leave with them?

I invite you to share your observations, feelings, and experiences by leaving a Reply in the Comments section, below. Soul-to-soul!

© 2021 Lori A. Noonan. All Rights Reserved.

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

This phrase, popularized during the 1960s and ’70s has a nice ring to it, indeed. A catchy phrase, so to say. It’s a way of reminding us that we can start fresh, start over, each day brings a new dawn. It’s the latter part of the phrase, though, that can be confounding. The “rest” of your life, as in the remainder of your life, what is that, exactly? It’s unknown. It’s the grand mystery. The remainder could be years, months, or an instant.

Today IS your life, yes?

Sure, there’s the unfolding. There’s the becoming. There’s the planting, the cultivating, the growing, the expanding, followed by the harvesting and the fruits of our labor. There can be beauty, grace, lessons, and meaning in all of these. Heck, many a Soul Notes article has been devoted to these topics. In my own life, and in others’ lives, I advocate for the process of envisioning, and easing into the flow, and merging with the natural cycles.

There’s wisdom in setting sail and course-correcting with awareness and intention. It’s not an either, or. It’s an all-in. All-in this moment. All-in with all senses engaged. All-in awareness. Now. And again. And again.

For your consideration:

Here’s another popular phrase: “We have time to kill.” If we’re simply treading water waiting for the ‘real’ event to happen, then what happens in the meantime? It’s ALL in the meantime!

As the signs say along the tracks of the London Underground: Mind the Gap.

Living with awareness brings the present moment into focus. Living without awareness is a life, erm, not really lived — a life suspended, like a tolling of a statute of limitations. Don’t be that person. Be you. All of you. All the time.

Okay, your turn:

Rephrasing the ‘the first day of the rest of your life’ into: Today IS your life — When you read this, what comes up for you?

I invite you to share your observations, feelings, and experiences by leaving a Reply in the Comments section, below. Soul-to-soul!

© 2021 Lori A. Noonan. All Rights Reserved.

Second things first

“It’s become so automatic, I don’t even think about it when I’m doing it.”

“It is so ‘second nature,’ I could do it in my sleep.”

What if we put our second nature first? What if our second nature became our first nature?

When we say something becomes second nature, we mean that it’s not something we’re consciously aware of when we’re doing it. For example, once you learn how to drive a car, you’re not consciously aware of all the movements you’re making to drive the car, and to navigate from point A to point B.

It could also be something that we say we do by instinct — again, without really thinking about it.

“I don’t know how I reached out and kept that child from falling over the railing, it was just a knee-jerk reflex.”

In other words, it’s living from your subconscious. I wouldn’t say it is unconscious — it’s anything but that. Rather, it’s consciously living from what is there all along. Instead of relying on thinking to make it happen — we let the thinking take a back seat, and elevate the subconscious up to the surface.

We can invite it up and out to play all the time! Radical idea? Maybe. Worth it? Absolutely.

Is thinking overrated?

“I never gave it another thought.”

“I just did it without thinking.”

We say things like the above statements as if thinking is the central benchmark, the kingpin, the main yardstick by which to gauge our actions and experiences. Why have we given thinking such an elevated status?

Of course, in any given moment your brain never truly shuts off. It doesn’t completely disengage from your bodily functions any more than your lungs keep from expanding and contracting, or your heart stops beating.

It’s merely a part of you, and yet it’s not all of you. When your second nature kicks in — during any emergency for example — you bring your awareness into keen focus. You are bringing a blending in of all of you into and to that moment. You are one with the situation, each person in that moment, and truly one with all of creation. There are no boundaries real or perceived. I know this may seem trippy, and I assure you this is not a drug-induced blog post, if that’s what you’re thinking. What you’re thinking, see what I mean? We are a thinking-obsessed so called modern society.

For your consideration:

What if we allowed our thinking to fade into the mix of our lived experiences, almost as if we swirled our thinking into a can of paint, using a wooden dowel, and letting the thinking disappear into the whole of the paint? Would we miss it ? Or, would we simply allow it to swirl into the mixture that becomes the fully blended vibrant paint color? Did the prior paint in the can cease to exist, or did the new paint that was added in — did that no longer exist, once we mixed it all in together? Nope. It stayed. It melded. It only seemed to disappear.

We can step out of our thinking brain and experience all of creation in a 360-degree (up down, all-around) way. We can live life in a way that I would deem to be spherical.

I contend that our lives would take on a, pardon the pun, whole new dimension. I’ve been living this way the past few weeks, and it’s been wild as heck and soooo nice to give my brain a rest. I’ve been putting my brain on an ongoing moment-by-moment ‘time out,’ and it’s been wondrous. And, in living this way you’re never alone, because you are living from a place of being one with everyone and everything.

Okay, your turn:

Does this idea of living from what I am calling a place of spherical awareness — living wholly and completely from outside the thinking mind — does that appeal to you? Are you willing to give it a go?

I invite you to share your feelings and experiences by leaving a Reply in the Comments section, below. Soul-to-soul!

© 2021 Lori A. Noonan. All Rights Reserved.

All things being equal

 

 

All things being equal

EQUINOX

Equal days and nights

Welcoming in with delight

and a bit of fright

the insight

that comes with the rotation of the planet

the turning of the seasons

All amongst the haze

And daze of shortened days’

light

 

Not unlike fallowed farmland

we allow room to rest and restore

and

root down

to stabilize

as the harsher winds

of Winter will be

approaching

 

Leaving behind

the lazy dazy

daisy

days

of Summer

 

Autumn brings harvest

 

Thankful for the harvest

(did you know Thanksgiving used to be observed during early October and not late November as it is now in the United States?)

 

Yes, thankful even this year

2020

and its

harvest

of

stillness

reflection

eye opening

tears inducing

heart opening

heart closing

heart wrenching

heart healing

 

Awareness

and the time and space

to embrace

thoughtfulness

consideration

discerning

what’s

true

and real

and real(ly) important

For your consideration:

Notice, without jumping to quick conclusions, what this unusually strange and often unsettling year has brought up for you.  What are you harvesting?  Not from the surface-social-media-finger-pointing-mud-slinging level, but at the level of deep rootedness…feeling into what your heart knows to be true?

For me, among other things, I find myself doing an ongoing life review of sorts. I’m viewing my earlier experiences in a new (dare I say “novel” as in a novel virus) way. This time affords me an opportunity to be not only reflective but more inventive, more innovative, more imaginative, more creative.

Maybe Plato* was on to something!

(*Reference to his dialogue, the Republic and the idea that from necessity comes invention.  More on that perhaps in a future blog post!)

Okay, your turn:

What’s been coming up for you during these turbulent times? Are you feeling less rooted? Are you nervous that you’ll be blown over by the winds of change? Will you join me in my pledge to stay rooted throughout it all?

I invite you to share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences by leaving a Reply in the Comments section, below. Soul-to-soul!

© 2020 Lori A. Noonan. All Rights Reserved.