Photo by UGArdener

If you could associate springtime with a room you wouldn’t find inside the home, as it would be outside in the garden. Our yards are where many of us enjoy spending time in the warmer months. Whether you are an experienced gardener or a weekend patio grower the time is fast approaching to incorporate new ideas to your garden. Local yard and garden centers are filled with new and unusual choices awaiting your imagination. You can find art for the garden in a variety of yard decorations. Statues along with many other items like birdbaths, chimes, bells, candles, whirligigs, flags, water gardens, and much, more. In part these items are influenced by the new design trend of moving the inside out and the outside in.
One of the most prevalent influences that impact the soul of the design of the garden is Feng Shui.

Feng Shui pronounced (Fung Schway) is the Chinese art of placement. Well known for thousands of years in the Far East only recently has the Western world began to take notice.

According to Feng Shui, and many other metaphysical and soulful traditions, the internal and external is a mirror of one another. Physical external spaces reflect our states of mind and contribute in a positive or negative way. Cluttered yards filled with no-longer-needed or loved items, often reflect cluttered thoughts.

Soul Feng Shui, the type of Feng Shui that I work with, is concerned with how to create spaces that align a positive flow of energy for the benefit of health, vitality and success of those using the space. Gardens are especially important for our well being as they provide spaces that help us to move us toward an inward experience. With time stopped, or at least greatly slowed down, we can contemplate and reflect.

To begin to incorporate a soulful approach to your outdoor spaces consider the following ideas: Have all paths follow the lines of a gentle curve. This encourages us to slow down. Another idea is to choose specific type of garden areas that reflects specific moods. A shade garden represents the hidden aspects. A moon garden whose flowers only bloom at night conveys the wild mysterious parts of us. A rock garden is a wonderful contrast in color, texture and feeling next to the multi colored flower garden. Encourage yourself, and others, to spend more time in the garden by placing a hammock, benches or chairs. A solo chair, called a spirit chair, is placed in a very intuitive place as reminder to invite visitors of a celestial nature.

You can heighten your senses by adding sights and sounds. Planting bamboo or other ornamental grasses, as well as adding chimes, whirligigs or anything that moves will make sounds. Let other critters call your garden home. Other life forms like butterflies, dragonflies, fish or birds, bring good luck and provide the missing link in the connection of the human, plant and animal worlds. Whatever the size and type of garden you have, bringing a soulful feeling to it can infuse new life into those spaces and provide a deeper richer experience.

A quote from Thomas Moore “Entering the garden is like passing through a mystical gate.”

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Katherine Allen Soul & Energy Strategist

Virginia Clark ItsNeverToLateToMarry.com

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Katherine Allen Soul & Energy Strategist

Hope Van Vleet Ascending Life

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I have recently started to take afternoon walks which I find stress releasing but only a few of those and I am already noticing how much yard work needs to be done as well as many projects that were left for the spring that is now the time to finish. I am at the crossroad of drive and/or enjoyment, using the time in the afternoon to pick up weeds and debris instead of taking luxurious afternoon walks. But, I am catching myself and while it is important to do the yard work he walks brought me so much joy. So, instead of filling my time with all the things that need to be done I am going to balance a little of walking with some weeding at the end of the walk or a little before the walk but keep the joyful activity on a daily basis. I am like a lot of other people that spring propels them into a lot of action, filling our calendars with endless tasks and projects but we are only at a beginning of longer days and shorter nights. We have many of these to experience. When we trust that each season of our lives like the seasons of the year slowly build into a magnificent story or song, with harmonious notes that may be missed if not fully present for them.

If you find yourself getting stressed out and adding more too many things to your to do list you may be in danger of losing precious time. A mind that leaps forward is not present for what is in front of it. It starts to push against things instead of leaning into them. You may experience being overwhelmed or not feeling supported because you are out of the flow of grace where even the force of gravity starts pulling and pushing. This pinches off the divine flow of the feminine flow where the universe opens its helpers for your daily assistance.

1. Slow it down-practice the next task by deliberating slowing each movement slower and slower until you can feel energy of expansion and relaxation within the task. You will find the sweet spot of ease there.
2. Change up your altar space-clean, DE clutter and add the right symbol and energy in a picture, statue or a certain type of flower. You may have a winter spot within your home and a spring/summer area for your spiritual daily practice. Where would that be?
3. Take short but more often walks, 10 or 20 minutes in the morning and before dinner helps you to notice the shifts in the walks and in nature. Even the difference of a few hours makes on the opening of the fresh new buds on trees and blooms in the gardens/yards can change greatly. Take in that chi (energy) and use it to enliven your own projects and creativity.

Have a beautiful day, starting with this short 10 minute video to remind you of how much of a gift each day is. This was sent to me from a friend/client and I so appreciated it I wanted to send it to you.

It is worth staying through the end of it.

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Photo by Fredrick Linge

Every one of us has had the experience of being bullied. It crosses all ages, all races and all times.

One of the huge ramifications and consequence of living with a power over another, the ego conditioning of a time past is that power was gained by taking it from another. But, this is changing in the new age of the soul, where we are living from the heart instead of ego power.

Most of us recognize a bully, someone that asserts their will over us and excerpts pressure to confirm to their point of view and way of doing and being.

But it is the more subtle type of a vampire, energy draining that is another side of the coin or bully behavior that is often disguised in a sweet package. A soft spoken, gentle, creative type that has not had the opportunity yet to hold a strong ego sense of who they are that becomes passive aggressive as they feel desperate and need to reclaim their own personal power. This intense need to protect and defend themselves from their past experiences that hurt them often brings everyone suspect of needing to watch others through a victims lens so they can get what they need often at the expense of others.

I, myself, engaged more of this type of bullying in my life. While I do not like to admit it, I didn’t have the tools to understand it for a long time even though I was engaged in spiritual work. It is not anyone’s fault that they have an underdeveloped or overdeveloped ego, but is each person’s responsibility to become aware of it and re-set a new course of action that manages the ego in a healthy way.

An underdeveloped ego is when one’s personal power was often arrested in the maturation of building a strong ego.
It is important to have clear boundaries, to know your own personal power and weld with this strength. A bully can be from this underdeveloped or over development of the ego that is often too controlling and domineering personality.

As in all real learning it has to come from deep within yourself, seeing your own behavior and then making a resolve to shift and change it. It is hard to do but so worth the effort. And when you recognize your own neediness or desperation you can see it in others. That is real power the power to transform and transmute unaware, destructive energy into the light. The dark is only the unknown yet not brought into the light of awareness where a new pattern of truth becomes a willful choice.

As Eckhart Tolle states in his book, A New Earth, it is enough to simply bring the awareness of this experience into your consciousness and with no judgment, only compassion to make a new choice that honors the light with your soul.

Here are a few clues as to the behavior within you or others that show the energy of bullying, or energy vaporing.

1. Blaming others for life not working out.
2. Having to defend or protect.
3. Not listening and getting what others are feeling and say
4. A heavy desperate need to cling.
5. Using low vibration words like needy and desperate.
6. Others not responding in the way you want them to
7. Not a clear sense of personal boundaries of yourself or others
8. Trying to control a situation to get what you want.
9. Not trusting the universe to supply your heart’s desires.
10. Refusing to see the gift in any and all seemingly negative experiences.
11. Falling into a state of darkness and dis-ease in response of other peoples decisions.

What you can do when you experience the bullying and/or an energy vampire experience in others or within yourself?

Remind yourself that there is a gift of awareness within this opportunity. A gift to rewire your old ego brain to a higher cortex of a loving, kind and compassionate one in which will rise you to your joy for life again. Your soul is here for its own joy. Allow it to be so.

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Spring is a time of new beginnings. It is the time to plant the seeds of our dreams and to nourish the soil (the activities) that will support our goals. The element of wood energy becomes dominant; its energy moves downward and upward like the first saplings of green plants. It is a time of explosion. As we begin to see the world awakening from its slumbering sleep into a re-awakening of life, the colors green and other bright jewel tones of spring’s flowers are all around. It is a time of regeneration. To take part of this energy, add visible signs of progress and vitality into your home by repainting a wall, repairing a broken chair or by substituting the winter’s colors with accent colors of the various shades of greens or other bright jeweled colors found in the spring’s buds. Create a feeling of freshness as you open the doors and window, allowing the seasonal winds to dance lightness into your environments. As you spring clean, store away the items of winter and replace them with a tall cylinder shaped vase (springs’ energy is characterized by this shape) filled with fresh tall stemmed flowers and watch the magic of creativity and productivity take hold.

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My work with Feng Shui helped me to understand that by being present in the moment you activate your five senses: smell, touch, hear, taste and sight. A nervous system that is fully engaged also fires up the higher senses of dreaming, imagining, and intuiting. Soon you are super-charged for any task at hand. This makes the ego very happy to retire into the background as your full self-engage; your soul finds joy in the once uncomfortable tasks and finds the passion and joy in it.

Three ways to let go of the resistance

1. When you feel resistance know that your ego is trying to take charge.
2. Use your resistance as a sign that it is time to step up to increasing your awareness level.
3. Invite your five senses to transport you to the power of being in the Now

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