The Shankari View

I am very sorry that my Blog is temporarily unavailable.  I have had to dedicate my time to designing jewelry & working on my second home & new school in Hawaii.  Unfortunately I've had no time to write.

I apologize for the inconvenience & please check back often, because writing is one of my true passions I will certainly begin again, as soon as I'm able.

Tolerance and Patience

Today I was talking to a friend and she told me she was “trying to be more tolerant.”  I responded with, “don’t you mean ‘patient?”  She thought about it for a moment and asked, ”what’s the difference?” “There’s a huge difference,” I replied, surprised she didn’t know what that was.  Do you know what it is?

The difference between patience and tolerance is the presence or absence of judgment.

To be tolerant is to say that you have already made a judgment but you are attempting to ‘not apply it too harshly’…whereas to be patient is to provide some time and space for change before you make the judgment that brings you to a point of intolerance.

                  

Tolerance is the measure of how much stress something can take before it snaps…Patience comes from the Latin word ‘pax’ which means ‘peace’. To be patient is to look for the peaceful way…not to judge and cause upheaval.

To be ‘tolerant’ is far more stressful on the body, mind and spirit than to be ‘patient’. When you tolerate something or someone, you are exhausting your reserves of inner strength to deal with a situation that you have decided will not change.

To be patient with something or someone is to provide a ‘space’ in which things have the potential to change for the better…or worse…but definitely change, rather than stay stuck.

Since we are all magicians and every word we speak is a spell we cast upon ourselves, I suggest that we never use the word tolerate if we can replace it with patient …ever again.

Why?…because it is easier on our biological and psychological systems. It produces less aging material in the body and more social space for solution rather than simply more of the same old problem. Intolerant is even worse!

                   

Think of the chasm between intolerant and impatient! Intolerant means the individual has no flexibility or willingness to see anything other than their own reality, whereas impatient generally means the individual in question does not have a common relationship with another’s timing and would prefer them to get some speed up. 

Can you feel how different these two words are now?  Patience is a virtue. Tolerance is what comes before the bridge between ‘now’ and ‘then’ collapses and we find ourselves at war again.

Pax…peace…Toll…what we pay …

Painting Silk

Did you know that silk has the same frequency as crystal?

That's why it is such a powerful healing device.  It actually has the power to hold sound and color within its personal energy equation.  When I was pregnant with my last child fourteen years ago,  I began researching the qualities of silk.  Like most skills in my life, my research was initially driven by the need to survive.

Living in Bali, seeing clients daily, growing bigger and rounder by the minute, I wanted to dress in the fabric that would most support my ability to be successful under pressure.  After much research, I discovered that silk is the strongest natural thread in the world.  It is absolutely energy absorbent so takes on the intent of the maker and then the wearer.

In ancient Japan, your worth was determined by the number of silk kimonos you owned.  The quality of your concubine was determined by the value and number of silk kimonos you could afford to gift her.  Each piece, made from millions of tiny threads, produced by a caterpillar!  Produced for what purpose?  To create a chrysalis, a cocoon!  And what exactly is a cocoon?  It's a small sacred space to metamorphose within from a caterpillar to a butterfly...

That's just what I was looking for when I was pregnant with Ahkasha, a sacred space to metamorphose within.  I took it upon myself to learn how to paint silk.  I highly recommend it.  It served many purposes in my life.  One very important one was that I had a tendency to become so anal and meticulous.  I was a problem to myself and others...overworking everything to death, including myself of course!

By learning how to paint silk on a deep metamorphic level, I set myself free from this condition.  The very nature of the medium does not allow for absolute control of anything.  So I had to let go...and it was a huge healing experience, just to let go the need to 'control', and work with the color.

When the day comes that you finally get over watching CNN to determine your reality and decide that Bali is a beautiful healing island worth a visit, come and learn how to paint silk.  Learn how to create a personal garment of power and purpose for yourself, a garment with the same frequency as crystal, qualified by the colors you choose and the myriad of colors you will create from those original three.  You will be amazed at how challenging, yet rewarding, it is to paint silk.  I look forward to sharing the adventure with you.

Youth Worship, Part II

Western Culture generally believes this life is a one way street.

We are born, eat, sleep and reproduce, then die, leaving only our genetic code in another, or perhaps our name on a building to mark our passing.

 How meaningless is that?

 No wonder people get depressed. I have never personally had this problem since I began having clear recollections of my past lives when I was in my early teens.

I had the other problem. I didn’t live in the common reality so I felt ostracized and alienated. In fact, I created the normal human experience from a different source of information. So far, I’ve never met a single person who said they genuinely felt a powerful sense of belonging as they grew up. It can be assumed, therefore, this is part of the lesson of humanity…overcoming our alienated sense of ‘self’ and learning how to integrate a useful, whole hearted sense of self in its place.

So how can you grow old if you never die…because everything in the third dimension is based on relative reality. To feel old, you must measure yourself against something young….To feel powerful, you must measure yourself against something weaker than yourself, etc.

That’s the trouble with measuring…There will always be those younger and those older, those more ‘beautiful’ and those less, those weaker and those stronger than yourself…SO STOP IT RIGHT NOW!

When you step out of all that self judgment and into self acceptance, the world is a completely different place. How do I know? Where is my evidence? I have given birth to five children, including a set of twins. I breast fed them all for years. Yet today, I have no stretch marks and no sagging empty left-overs, not because I have implants or surgery, but because I have a huge amount of self acceptance and love. Quite simply, I love my breasts, I understand my body and I am a Magician…

What does that mean? It means I know how to work with energy and universal truth. It means I create my own reality from the substance of my universal knowing…nothing dies, everything is eternally malleable.

If you want to feel young and beautiful, let go of feeling like there’s someone else to please, who has a higher standard than you can reach. Let go of regret, resentment and frustration. Learn new skills, live for the joy of the moment. Become flexible and adapt to whatever is occurring in your life with Grace. Give up feeling guilty and go for joy…with a passion. No one else cares what you think about yourself so you may as well think the best! Remember, we are living in a magical time on earth. Everything is available for change.

In the not so distant past, to live past 36 was a big deal. You were considered an ancient being if you got to 60! Only the rich and the well fed lived for more than 48 years. Four cycles of twelve…one in each season…that’s a whole lifetime. These days, there’s the possibility of extending our lives into the future for nearly twice that period of time so we get to live more than one lifetime in the same body…now that’s a gift or a curse!...and that’s up to us!

Youth Worship, Part I

We are living in a world obsessed with youth and external forms of beauty.

                               

No one misses out on feeling old when they’re very young in our culture…Interesting isn’t it?

Do you know that the flexibility of your spine is a true indication of the flexibility of your mind…and vice versa…and the flexibility of your mind is in direct relationship with the adaptability of your personality and the youthfulness of your body?

Why is that?

A youthful body carries less fear and regret…less weight in the emotional body.  Adaptability is evidence of higher evolution.  Those dinosaurs had trouble adapting and you know what happened to them!

                              

There are a million things in our commercial society that are sold as techniques for staying young, but the first thing on the agenda is to make the general public afraid of growing old.  That way there is a captured willing market for the multitude of products. There is, of course, no “them” that do this, rather “they” express a common social theme and apply themselves to making money from that weakness.

                                

In a culture that worships youthfulness, your value as a human seems to decrease as you grow older.  What a load of horse manure! That makes no sense.

                               

Do you know what ages people more than any other thing?  Fear of growing old!  Wow, that’s a neat self-fulfilling prophesy.  What else ages humans quickly?  Shall I list a few you?

                               

Once you understand this, you can create your very own youthing program.  It won’t cost you a cent and it will have a huge positive result for you.

RESENTMENT, REGRET, ANXIETY, GUILT, FRUSTRATION, FEAR, ANGER, DISHONESTY, JUDGEMENT…These are the frequencies of ‘Being’ that age our human bodies. Why…because they are very expensive to our physical and emotional systems, they exhaust our resources of ‘lightness’, they make us heavy and slow or fast and furious until we fall in a heap on the floor.

Age is an illusion. I have clear memories of lifetimes I lived thousands of years ago.  Where does that fit into the picture?

More soon…. 

Depression

When you consider the original meaning of this word, it describes the action of “pressing down.” Indeed, it refers to an action and a direction of movement…’down’ leaving all around it in ‘overwhelm’…What is it that when de-pressed, doesn’t recover, but rather stays in its state of de-pression without further force?  Dehydrated flesh for one…the skin stays down and indented after being pressed in by a strong thumb… have you ever noticed that?

                        

That’s the condition of the spirit, when some one says they are “depressed.”  So using the same analogy, what is it that addresses the problem of dehydration?

Did I just hear you say water?

I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but according to the World Health Organization, water is only part of the answer.  In cases of severe dehydration, the alchemic combination of sugar, salt and water is essential for recovery.  Why?  It is because this combination educates and conditions the body in order for it to be available for taking in the water and effectively using it as the solution to dehydration. Think of all the possible analogies for that sugar and salt in your life…

The bottom line for us humans is we live in a constantly changing bio- chemical soup.  We are always in one form of crisis or other, sponsored by our need to grow.  We are all becoming body alchemists of one sort or another in order to survive with good form.

                        

If you genuinely want to heal from your depressed condition, a powerful move in the right direction is to simply change your soup bowl…in other words, change the dynamics within your personal bio- chemical soup.  I know, you think I’m crazy but bear with me for a moment.  Think about how much your environment affects your sense of self.  That environment is a reflection to you of you.  If you don’t like yourself, your environment will reflect that back to you…and you will stay depressed and become ill.

                         

We all feed from our environment, physically, spiritually and mentally. We set ourselves up to be depressed if we are not feeding ourselves good things. I used to get very depressed when I was a young mother of small children.  Perhaps you don’t know this, but I have five children and when I was 27 years old, I had four under five and three were in diapers.

                        

Sometimes the intuitive alchemist within me would rear up when it saw trouble brewing and force me to clear and clean and set Sacred Space for myself in my home…not because I had visitors or an audience, but solely for myself and my own well being.  It always worked!

Along the same lines, I was given a gift by a Satyananda Monk from the Mangrove Mountain Ashram, north of Sydney.  He told me, “When the mind chatters, make the body work!” I think of those words often and apply them regularly…since my mind tends to still be a little undisciplined.

   

Are you contributing to your environment…or simply ignoring it or maybe adjusting to its chaos…or boredom…? Feed yourself well. Create order…place some gorgeous flowers on your mantle or altar, light some incense, ring those bells and let the Angels know you’re coming out to play!

                        

They want everyone to come and play since play leads to joy and joy is the true antidote to depression.  It is effervescent, Divine Order in action.  Are you ready to play?

Abundance

To become genuinely 'abundant,' we must give ourselves time for 'self.'  It's a powerful action and something completely within our own control.  It's much better than an anti-depressant!

If we don't feel we can afford 'time for self' today, what on earth makes us think we will ever experience abundance tomorrow?

If we're constantly looking outside ourselves for love and approval or self-deceiving for the sake of money, it will be at the cost of our personal freedom and integrity!  That can't lead to abundance...only bankruptcy.  With no integrity or freedom, what is the point of abundance?

There is no experience of true wealth as an outcome of that...only the opportunity to feel 'right' about being a 'loser' when our world collapses around us.  Do you really want to be right about that?  I don't!  I want to be right that I can make a difference, that I am loveable and useful to the Godforce, that I am abundant in all things.  I want to be right...that I carry the 'Light of God' within and have the power and balance to share that light effectively with others.

I have discovered, after many mistakes, that when I make life choices based on another's approval, I am effectively severing my relationship with my most powerfull ally...my own 'God self.'  If that's what's happening for you, my advice is to change your perspective and what you expect.  That means consciously changing from 'lack to luster'...What does that mean?

'Lack' is easy to understand...but what about 'Luster.'

'Luster' is an interesting word.  It comes from the Latin word 'luce' which means light...'Luster' is the kind of light that reflects back.  To become lusterless is to have an internal ability to hold our own 'Light' and to reflect that 'Light' to others in abundance, effortlessly like a perfect pearl.

What do you want?  What describes abundance to you?  You must describe it in detail in order to call it forth in your life.

Prime Factor

You must live in the sure knowledge that you are a 'Prime Factor.'  Yes, YOU are a 'Prime Factor' in this world.  Your energy counts, what you do and think counts because you are important.  It is a scientific fact that everything is affected by everything else...there is no exception to this rule in the whole galaxy.

You are so important that others treat you the way you treat yourself...How do you treat yourself?

Are you angry and disappointed with you?  Are you stingy?  Are you critical and disapproving or are you patient and caring?  It is a universal law that whatever you want to experience from another must have the working grid (pathway) already prepared for you by yourself.  You must show up if you want the opportunities and then when you show up, you have to have the goods!

What exactly does that mean?

That means that you show up in good order, not in disarray loooking for sympathy or a 'break,' but empowered through self-love, discipline and accountability.  The really big news is that the universe and almost no one in it is ever fooled when you turn up and say, "I'm cool, it's all ok!"...when it's not...have you noticed that?

If you are honest with yourself in the interaction, rather than self-deceiving for the sake of love, or perhaps simply 'to keep the boat steady,' the universe of human activities becomes transparent.

As Magicians (truth seekers), the more we develop our other 'sight,' the more we realize there are no secrets and no lies; we can't fool the energy...because it only deals in truth!

Don't be stingy...be considerate and compassionate with yourself...be forgiving, disciplined and accountable.  This is the only recipe for absolute success.  If you want to experience abundance, don't judge yourself and feel guilty all the time.  There's nothing like guilt to keep you poor...even when you have more than enough money!

Celebrate your life!  Become creatively involved at a passionate level on behalf of yourself. Remeber, your opinion of you is the only one that counts!  You set the standard for your own experience.  No one else has the power to do that for you.

What is it that limits you...keeps you poor, fearful and joyless...always worried and rarely in present time?  It's your own limited beliefs about yourself and your world!  Who can change those beliefs?

Only YOU can!

You are a 'Prime Factor.'  What you do, think and feel really counts...that's why you can make a difference.

Relationships, Part II

We were talking about the Navigator and the Captain within a successful marriage as an analogy for equally important, yet fundamentally different, roles within life.

Imagine for a moment that your family is a ship, traversing the oceans of life. Your ship will need a competent Navigator who understands the meaning of the stars and can plot a course for success and a courageous Captain who, once given the co-ordinates of the destination, will do everything in his power to get the ship to the desired destination.

I often say that the Navigator tells the Captain where to head his craft and the Captain says to the Navigator…’how fast?’ A relationship based on trust describes the effective team of a Navigator and a Captain…a husband and wife.  The wife navigates because it is the feminine energy that can read the stars at night…because she has a relationship with ‘the mysteries’ of creation through the cellular memory of her womb.  A Captain leads his party forward, making decisions that protect his navigator and support his crew.  He appears to be the boss, but without the navigator, he has no idea where to head his craft.   

A successful marriage is based on trust.  With genuine trust comes intimacy.  With intimacy comes freedom.  With freedom comes the opportunity to celebrate the truth of who you are…and who are you?

If you didn’t know already, you are an Infinite Immortal Being of Light, having a human experience.  Your primary relationship is with The God force…reflected within you.  This powerful connection to the Divine will never die, although it may be delayed as you struggle for knowledge of your true purpose within the third dimension and make decisions that do not serve your true purpose.

You must be sure of your own worth and the worthiness of those around you.  Then you are free to develop your relationships with personal clarity and strength of purpose and make that purpose an Inter-dependent relationship based on love…and trust…and freedom.

Relationships, Part I

Dependence…Co-dependence…Inter-dependence…

What do these words mean and how do they apply to relationship?

Well, you probably all have a fairly clear idea of what dependence means…no freedom of choice!

As a small child you are a dependent.  As an adult, if you have the mentality of a child and have never matured, you will look for others to depend upon. When you are a dependent, you have no freedom of choice.

Co-dependence is a little different.

If you are in a co-dependent relationship, you agree to always agree with each other. Members of a co-dependent relationship have no freedom.  They cannot afford to have an opinion of their own.  Only one opinion can be held by ‘the group’…that of the leader…and if you don’t agree, you will get the cold shoulder…the silent treatment.  Essentially, you will be emotionally shut out because the other party sees your independence as a challenge to their control over you.  They will feel betrayed by your independence so you choose the path of least resistance, agreement…for a quiet life…until you have almost lost your sense of ‘self’ completely.

Is this familiar? Even that word indicates family…familiar.  Families are famous for co-dependent relationships, supported through emotional manipulation and control.

Inter-dependence is what we are looking for if we are conscious and free within an intimate relationship. Inter-dependence relies on the individuals involved having the courage to speak the truth with no fear of reprisal or manipulation. A member of an inter-dependent relationship does not feel compelled to agree with their partner’s point of view or make their partner into something else. They are content and willing to let them grow at their own rate.  In an inter-dependent relationship, it is a given that each partner is of equal value, although they hold different skills…like the navigator and the Captain of a ship…more tomorrow…