DAY 365+103

I am right here

Open spaces 

Open heart

Open arms

Open eyes

My mind feels released

My soul flies gaining heights without any concern

playing with the wind while goes back to the day when everything started

when the journey commenced

and shows me the master plan that has led me here

to the inner place where acceptance dwells

where bliss is chasing me

where I realize that nothing has to be mended and I can fully embrace my life

where I feel that I can be the person I really am

This is the last installment of my BYOB class. It has been an wonderful journey, that I am planning to extend somehow along the next months. I knew that this year was meant to practice self-love and this class has been an amazing turning point that has helped me to do it in regular basis, so I don´t want to stop now. I have created a blog page to upload all these photos and those which I´ll take in the future. You can see it here: http://myhealingmoments.blogspot.com.es/p/blog-page.html 

I want to thank all those who have supported me throughout it, in particular my class mates and our teacher.

DAY 365+101

stray wisdom

Sometimes my feet know what my mind ignores and lead me to places where the answer to my thoughts and prayers is awaiting in the form of a visual treat, or a song, or a sudden smile.

This triggers little epiphanies, new sequences of connections that defy logic, but paradoxically make sense and often, make me awaken to a kinder mood. I guess that my inner being (who seems to have a rationality of its own) manages to inform me about the right direction when I am unwilling to listen. 

One day that I was totally overwhelmed by working and family issues, they led me to a shop that was selling this signal. Now it "lives" with me. Time has proved it to be true.

When I look back, I can see that those things that I thought were problems, actually were blessings in disguise:

The students that I shouldn´t have guided because they were taking another practice program, ended up being those who took more advantage of my teachings and have appreciated them more

The little disputes between my mom´s caregivers which bothered me so much, have showed that some of them were not reliable

The lack of support from most of my coworkers, have made me see the true nature of our relationship clear as water

The new atmosphere that the economic crisis is creating at university, is helping me to set new priorities and new boundaries

And all this have made me realize the true impact of my inner work on my life and the great importance of being centered and focused on me, not in a selfish way but in a healthy way

Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever found answers in unexpected places?

DAY 365+100

"Contemplation is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things"

Thomas Merton

DAY 365+99

deep inside me...

there is a tiny space 

a little place where clarity reigns

from where light emanates

a place that radiates calm

and wisdom

and beauty

and truth

It´s far and near

It´s a place where the entire universe resides

which is within me and also within you.

I´ve had to get acquainted with that place

I´ve had to explore, fit out and defend it,

I´ve had to occupy it

and only then,

only then,

life has started to make sense to me.

Today, I vindicate

and honor that place

DAY 365+98

this is the place where I belong

Volcanic rocks, hard lightaridity, loneliness, bare beauty
lack of ornaments...
just the vast sea of lava.


Here and there a green spot reminds how the life reveals itself in other placesbut not here, not here.
Life here is made of salt, wind and sand
no trees, no big mountains, no rivers
no shades...
just a merciless sun
ridges and curves
and, far away, the ocean. 


After a quarter of century or moreI am walking here again:
the wind blows
and the sun is setting
my feets remember how to jump from one rock to another
my eyes get loss in the hues of black
my heart makes a little dance
and I breathe deeply, once and again.


I remember how naive I still was the last time I walked about this solidified magmaand realize that the naivety and the old joy of vivre
the hope and the confidence
are still with me and are awakening while I contemplate my old friend, the volcano
and feel how the old pain starts to be the propelling force that will lead me to an even better place.

Why we need to stay away from some places when we feel injured, I don´t know.
Why we distance ourselves from the places (or activities) that have nourished us previously, I don´t know.
Why we punish ourselves when other person does the same, I don´t know.
Why it takes us so much time to start to take care of ourselves, I don´t know.

This doesn´t even matter, maybe. Here I am again and I feel welcome.


I took this photo in the volcano which is in front of my mom´s house. I decided to go there for a photo-walk and invited my nephew without thinking very much... and suddenly all these feelings emerged.

Cross-posted at Vision and Verb on Friday. Many other women share their passion for creativity and words there, please visit us, it is a wonderful site

There you will find also a Card Shoppe. For every greeting card sold, the profit will accrue in allotments of $25 each to be given as loans to men and women around the world who are starting their own businesses. We have chosen the non-profit organization KIVA as the conduit for our giving back

You can send a love note to a friend and make a difference in the world

DAY 365+97

I am not going to search for your ideal perfection anymore. It´s a deception

From now on, I am only going to see miracles around me 

and inside me

I am going to experience amazement

I am going to let go preconceived ideas about beauty,

about life, about myself

I am determined to cultivate gratitude

I am going to accept what is, not to regret or reject

I am going to live

I am going to celebrate my gifts and talents

I don´t want to fight anymore against myself

I want to play and laugh and love

I want to trust my life

I want to improve myself by embracing the power of what I really am

If you can help me to do this with much love, stay,

if not, set me free

I am sorry, it´s not you, it´s me

Kind Regards

Z.

DAY 365+96

there is a happy medium 
between 

Pleasing others and selfishness

Extreme need of excellence and inefficiency

Rigidness about one´s beliefs and lack of opinion

Focusing on achievement and giving up one´s dreams and goals

Endless self-criticism and blindness

Constancy and lack of willpower

Tolerance to frustration and indolence

Impatience and apathy

Obsessive concerns and carelessness

Need of approval and arrogance

Improvement of oneself through self-knowledge and looking always outside

Self-demanding attitude and self-indulgence

Motivation and the loss of hope

...A happy medium where I can feel simply at ease

Indeed I have found it between the past and the future, between my mind and my heart, between earth and heaven

It is a place where nothing has to be repaired because nothing is defective, where one can take ownership of one´s own life without fear

DAY 365+95

Why don´t dream of it all? (playing with reveries)

I have started a self-portrait journey again  and I am taking an on-line class. At the same time I am trying to reinforce my daily practice and to reconnect with my old passion for drawing and to practice self-love and self-respect. Past week I thought that this was too much, and saw August as a big desert filled with self-demands

After a few breathes (and some reflections), this morning I realized that this thoughts were a sort of self-sabotage because deep inside I think I don´t deserve so much attention, I shouldn´t devote so much time to myself, I shouldn´t dream big...

But after debating between all those ideas, I said to myself, "Wait. Why I can´t dream of having it all, of being whoever I want to be... who is preventing me from being free?. I took my camera and faced up a self-portrait challenge that I was postponing (be playful, something that I think I am not). I took my pencils and drew. I came here and wrote the following list inspired by this amazing post. Please follow the link, you´ll enjoy it.

I want to be serious and responsible
I want to be playful and have not a care in this world

I want to be a Zen monk and master the art of meditation
I want to walk by the red carpet (at least once)

I want to travel abroad and be part of an humanitarian project
I want to stay at home and read all day long

I want to have a garden and make grow my own vegetables
I want to live in a city and to plant herbs in pots

I want to fly to the Antarctic and get lost there
I want to fly to the isle where I was born and living with my mom forever

I want to teach every day of my life
I want to own a little library or a tea shop

I want to go to Tahiti
I want to live in Italy for a year (or more)

I want to study and learn more
I want to be peaceful and know that I am enough

I want to be romantic, careless, passionate, bohemian
I want to be predictable, analytic, logic, sensible

I want to sleep outside and count the stars
I want to go to bed at home and kiss my cats goodnight

I want to have a balanced diet
I want to eat sandwiches, drink tea and don´t have a meal timetable

I want to go around the world with my husband and have a nomad existence
I want to be with my mother during her last day

I want to have my dark hair forever
I want to let my gray hair grow and don´t tint it anymore

I want to have a minimalist house
I want to have shabby furniture and mementos everywhere

I want to visit Auschwitz
I want to forget all the suffering

I want to believe that my story counts
I want not to be defined by my story

I want to be extravert and sociable and be the soul of the parties
I want to keep being introvert and reflective

I want to run a marathon
I want to stay at home and write my journals and draw

I want to have time to do all these things
I want to be happy being where I am

I want to be myself
I want to be every tiny “me” that I know still live inside me

DAY 365+94

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark,
 in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours"

Ayn Rand


I am starting again a self-portrait journey. I´ll talk about it.
Happy Week, dear friends.
Z.