 Join author, intuitive and reality shifter Cynthia Sue Larson every month for uplifting advice and insights.
"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within."
One of the things I enjoyed most while attending the Chihuly exhibit this month in San Francisco was seeing the glass art sculptures glowing brightly with brilliant colors, as if hidden lights were tucked inside each one. The genius of these art sculptures relied upon the breathtaking contrast between light and dark, so their true splendor came through most clearly when fully lit and placed in contrast with dark surroundings. I looked up at the ceiling to see well-placed spotlights shining down through the gorgeous sculptures — and I peered inside the sculptures to satisfy my curiosity that they indeed had no hidden lights placed inside. Some art pieces shone so brightly that they illuminated the entire room with their beautiful multi-colored glow, and others smoldered quietly with gentle warmth. In all cases, these sculptures reminded me that just as the stars in the sky provide us with points of reference in what could otherwise be complete darkness, we, too have the ability to shine for ourselves and others.
The light we shine is something that comes through us quite naturally, sometimes giving others around us a feeling of being uplifted, at the same time as we are uplifted as well. Scientific studies mentioned in the book, Aura Advantage describe how this light we emit is quantifiable, and can be measured, and we can verify through such studies that happier people literally do "light up a room" much more than those who are not feeling so joyfully radiant. In so-called dark times, when people are feeling more stressed than usual, we can benefit from realizing that the amount of light we welcome into our lives can make a tremendous positive difference in our ability to consider more options and possibilities, while staying relaxed, focused, and aware.
Knowing that we humans have a lot to do with how much light shines down and through us gives us the ability to "take back the night," and reclaim a sense of confidence in all places, times and situations we may face. You can increase the amount of light in your world right now, by doing a very simple meditation:
- Imagine that every photon and ray of light that you can see and that you can imagine in your immediate vicinity is now joining with you and shining through you.
- Breathe deeply, inhaling this divine luminosity into the essential core of your own radiant being.
- Exhale, and notice how you are becoming increasingly more radiant, happy, and light.
Wishing you may discover just how good your life can get,
Cynthia Sue Larson
email Cynthia at
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"The only journey is the one within"
— Rainer Maria Rilke
The saying "Wherever you go, there you are," has been very much on my mind this past week, after attending my 30th high school reunion. Even though some people had weathered tremendous emotional, financial, physical and spiritual hardships over the years, they maintained such a positive view of life and what is possible that they are an inspiration to everyone who meets and knows them. Somewhere along the way, these people have figured out that the outer situations in their lives could and would only ever improve when they improved themselves on the inside, and their positive results spoke for themselves. The attitude of gratefulness and commitment to strive toward challenging goals gives these people an inner beauty of tremendous radiance. Just looking at them, it became clear to me that surely the greatest way to stay young at heart and in body is by making the most of what we are and what we have, regardless what challenges we encounter along the way.
How positive are you when dealing with life's slings and arrows? To find out, you can listen to yourself and what you say to yourself when you encounter challenges, noting whether you take risks and face your fears, or not. The amazing thing about our fears is that they reside within us, not outside of us. This means that the time, energy and effort we invest in facing and releasing our inner fears is unquestionably the best investment we can possibly make. As world-renowned psychologist and father of self-actualization Abraham Maslow puts it:
• "Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth).
• Make the growth choice a dozen times a day."
Every great success story I have ever heard or seen has at its core a heroic individual who not only faces their fears head-on, but also recognizes that even when the path forward is unclear and victory uncertain, that doesn't really matter... because every experience brings new knowledge and information, and every situation is an opportunity to grow. This is the spirit of a winner: a man or woman who focuses on what they have learned that they did not know before, and what they are now able to say and do and be that they could not say and do and be before.
Trusting that what you need is now coming to you is the essential quality within you that allows you to face whatever next comes your way. No matter what happens next, you can learn and grow from each experience. As you learn to relax and release your fears, and focus on what you most love, admire and appreciate in yourself and your world, life can become more and more beautiful and enjoyable.
Wishing you may discover just how good your life can get,
Cynthia Sue Larson
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"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart."
This has been an emotionally tumultuous month of transition for me, as I have been helping my older daughter prepare to move away to college. I have been surprised by feeling pangs of loss long before she goes, with an intensification of heartache the closer we come to the day she moves away. Even though I know that this move marks a natural passage of maturity for my daughter, it's astonishing to experience such deep feelings of love and impending loss as I feel how much I will miss her once she moves away. What is most surprising to me is how I feel my emotions in my entire body as all manner of unexpected physical sensations -- such as heart ache, butterflies in my stomach, and nervous restlessness. I am surprised that so much love could have been hiding dormant inside me, mostly unnoticed, all these years... until this time of imminent separation. The love I feel for my daughter is clearly so vast that it cannot possibly all fit in my heart, for it is affecting all of me.
Before going on my morning walk near the woods in the early morning summer fog today, I got a clear intuitive impression that I would see things I would like to photograph, and that it would therefore be a very good idea for me to bring my camera with me on my walk. With camera slung over my shoulder, and the family dog trotting happily at my side, I wondered what I might find. My thoughts turned to those I love, and how elusive the most beautiful things can be to capture on film, due to their fleeting, transitory nature... or the fact that their most beautiful essence can seldom be collapsed into two visual dimensions. With my mind wandering off in various directions, I completely forgot about taking pictures, as I admired nature's beauty all around me.
I looked up from my reverie as I walked along the forest, and was stunned to notice a stump that was very clearly heart-shaped. I had walked past it dozens of times before, yet today was the first time I had noticed the heart shape -- so I stopped and took a picture. As I continued my walk, I found dozens more hearts in the most unlikely places, and I snapped five more photos of heart-shaped ivy leaves, heart-shaped lichen growing on a rock, a heart-shaped string arranged perfectly in the road, a heart-shaped stone, and heart-shaped branches in an oak tree. Almost everywhere I looked, there was another heart looking back at me. Some of them were more obvious than others... and some of them, such as the heart-shaped-string, were impressionistic... mostly hinting at the essential form of a heart, as if making the statement, "You know what this is!"
Several people have recently shared stories with me for RealityShifters about how they find lucky pennies and four-leaf clovers in great profusion just about everywhere they go sometimes. These types of discoveries represent similar examples of coming across things we might not see at all unless we are in the right state of mind. Often, these reminders give us a sense of connectedness and love, when we might otherwise feel alone. When we find something that shows up as a sign repeatedly, again and again, the realityshifters perspective is these signs are part of our waking dream... that as our life can be seen as a lucid dream, these symbols have a message for us. I describe the concept of Living Lucidly in a Shifting Reality in much more detail in Chapter Eight of my book, Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World. The heart shape symbolizes love in all its many shapes and forms to me... and serves as a reminder that when I love someone or something with all my heart, love will always and ever be with me. Wherever I go, there is love.
The wonderful thing I felt as I found more hearts on one short walk than I usually notice in an entire week or month was that with each joyful discovery, I became more aware of how focusing on love is enough to bring showers of hearts to me in great profusion... giving me confirmation that simply by feeling so vulnerable and open to experiencing the vastness of love in my life, here it is, all around me. All I need do is recognize it when it shows up in its many forms and guises. And even through the heart ache of my daughter's impending move, I see that the beauty her love brings to my life will always be with me, however far away she may go.
Wishing you may discover just how good your life can get,
Cynthia Sue Larson |
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"Sometimes the world will scream No at you. But keep listening and you might hear the universe whisper Yes."
My exercise instructor recently asked my class the question, "When do people tend to quit?" One woman in the class replied, "When they hit a plateau" Our instructor nodded, and asked, "Do you think they tend to give up at the beginning of a plateau, or at the end of the plateau?" When his query was met with silence, he answered it himself, explaining that most people tend to give up on something after some time passes and there appears to be no further progress. In other words, most people quit right before they would have been about to begin the next growth curve of continued progress.
We can hit plateaus in any area of our lives, not just physical endeavors, in any situation where we discover that our forward progress is thwarted and we appear to be going nowhere. One of the best things to do in the face of such seemingly stagnant or stuck situations is to ask ourselves what can be learned... what can be changed... in ourselves. These questions will likely bring us face-to-face with some of the most challenging lessons in life, where we meet elements of our shadow side -- the parts of our psyche which are least illuminated and consciously embraced. While we may feel uncomfortable surveying shadow aspects of ourselves, they often contain keys to helping us find our inspiration and true joy in life, as well as ways to achieve goals we might otherwise consider to be impossible. Such insights have the power to help us access the energy required to lift ourselves up out of our current plateau and onward to the next level of success.
I met a wonderfully inspired artist, Misty Gamble, this past month who creates sculpture that helps people face the shadow side aspects within themselves. Some of her sculptures leave viewers feeling uncomfortable, despite their initial cheerful appearance from a distance, since closer inspection reveals the uglier shadow side motivations which most of us typically choose to ignore. Misty's sculptures help viewers better understand how pursuit of superficial motivations can lead to superficial success. Misty shows the world through her shining personal example of being an artist living true to her own dreams just how much each of us can achieve when we have the courage to face our fears and confront our shadow side.
Another artist, Yoko Ono, once created a ceiling painting which was best viewed by climbing a ladder up to the ceiling, and then using a magnifying lens... to discover the single word, "Yes." When singer John Lennon climbed the ladder and saw the word, "Yes," he knew the artist who created this work was very special... and Yoko's message to herself, John Lennon, and all of us is that no matter how difficult the world may seem, we can find the "Yes," by climbing just a bit higher.
If you take a moment now to consider an area of your life where no matter what you do, it seems the situation is just not budging one single centimeter... ask yourself what shadow side issue within yourself might be addressed. Know that whatever you see is a part of you which might need listening to... which might need tending to... which might need some of your conscious attention. Knowing that the best way to get good results in life is changing oneself is a secret the masters know... and it is something each and every one of us can discover for ourselves, in order to make our next quantum leaps forward.
Wishing you may discover just how good your life can get,
Cynthia Sue Larson
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"Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you."
-- Rumi, from "Entrance Door" in The Soul of Rumi
The concept of inner dialogue is usually associated with our tendency to run thoughts and ideas inside our heads. This idea of the incessant chatter of our "monkey minds" is central to many meditation practices, which provide people with tools to quiet the mind and calm the body. These practices operate on the principle that just as we can experience increased tranquility and clarity from clean, organized surroundings, we can also feel much more positive, balanced, and compassionate toward ourselves and others when we take time to clear our minds on a regular basis. The simple activity of clearing out mental clutter can give us the optimal vantage point we most need in order to see new opportunities we would miss otherwise.
There is another aspect of inner dialogue, which is the interconnectedness between our inner thoughts and feelings and everything and everyone around us. We do not exist in isolation, and are therefore continually immersed in an energetic conversation with the universe around us... even when most of the time, this conversation happens beneath our normal threshold of consciousness.
I was reminded of just how amazingly the inner and outer worlds converge while listening to Fred Alan Wolf's excellent audio learning course, Dr. Quantum Presents Do-It-Yourself Time Travel, in which Wolf tells the story of a man who had an amazingly complex dream set at the time of the French revolution. After many detailed events transpired, the man's dream culminated in a dramatic scene at a guillotine. At the precise moment when the guillotine dropped in the man's dream, he was startled awake by the headboard of his bed falling down on top of his head! The fact that such a lengthy dream could be dreamt immediately prior to such a dramatic and unusual event as a headboard landing on the dreamer's head demonstrates that we are much more connected to and aware of our environment than we tend to consciously acknowledge.
You can get confirmation of the interconnectedness between you and the universe when noting an amazing synchronicity of events which dovetails perfectly with something you were thinking silently to yourself. When you pay close attention to your inner dialogue, you can see how what you think and feel on the inside influences what is going on around you, and get a taste of how your inner dialogue interacts with the universe. Sometimes you will know things you had no obvious way of knowing (such as to look out for something landing on your head), and other times, you will find that your own calmness and clarity can bring coherence to an otherwise chaotic situation. It is in the very interconnectedness of All That Is that we can open the inner door to peaceful tranquility inside ourselves, and in so doing, share the gifts from this inner sanctuary with the world.
Wishing you may discover just how good your life can get,
Cynthia Sue Larson
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Written by Cynthia Sue Larson
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"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."
— Richard Bach, Illusions
As we approach the year 2012 and notice natural disasters around the world, many people wonder what will happen less than five short years from now. While some fear all manner of crises, it is reassuring to note that several indigenous peoples of Earth inform us that this time of transition has been long anticipated, and something that has occurred many times before. According to the Mayan long count calendar system which tracks events through 26,000 year cycles of time, there is special significance to the year 2012 being a time of transition from the "Earth era" to an "era of Ether" at the time of Winter Solstice, on December 21, 2012. Within the cycles spanning 5,125 years, there are cycles known as the '13 Baktun Count' which last 394 years, or 144,000 days. We are currently traveling through the final 13th baktun cycle -- which began in 1618 and will run through 2012, and which is known as both 'the triumph of materialism' and 'the transformation of matter.' The Maya predicted this time would be a time of great forgetting, in which we lose our sense of Oneness with nature and the Earth. In the 1600s, mechanical clocks were invented which continue to this day, and which give people a sense that time exists outside of us, rather than as part of us. The end of this materialistic time and the movement into the time of Ether is a profound change that also corresponds to a unique celestial event. On the winter solstice of 2012, the noonday Sun exactly conjuncts the crossing point of the sun's ecliptic with the galactic plane, while also closely conjuncting the exact the center of the galaxy.
This past month I conducted a workshop in which participants and I remote viewed 2012, to see for ourselves what the future holds in store. In this remote viewing circle, most all participants clearly sensed a feeling of tremendous harmony, peacefulness and joy... and yet some also sensed that just past this peaceful calm lay some degree of chaos, stress and strife. This energetic view of 2012 is one which feels like a smooth continuation of life as we know it today, with an additional emphasis on heightened energetic awareness. Most remote viewers had a sense of being in peaceful contemplation by themselves on December 21st 2012, and some noted they could clearly look out at a large, calm body of water. I saw myself by the Pacific Ocean along the California coast, and sensed that even as I was basking in radiant vibrations of unconditional love, there were people on Earth who were primarily focused more on material matters... such as wind storms.
According to Hopi legend, the world has already ended three times before, and people have survived fire, an ice age resulting from magnetic pole reversals, and flooding. The signs of the coming Fifth World are now appearing as prophesied by Hopi, as life forms from previous worlds spring up from the ground, the stars, and our hearts. The Hopi Life Plan petroglyphs remind people to be not be misled off course into attempting to be better than others, but instead to remain guided truly by Spirit. In previous end times, those who made it through the transition with the most ease were those whose kopavi, the 'door on top of their heads,' stayed open to receive inspiration, and whose hearts were open to caring for others. An attitude of open-mindedness and open heartedness is clearly optimal for facing times of great upheaval and change, yet in stressful times, people who have not practiced the art of keeping open-minded and open-hearted can find it challenging to maintain.
This past month has provided us with opportunities to assist people in the world who have suffered through earthquakes and wind storms. While it is clear that many crises we are facing now require our attention and assistance, it is equally clear on an intuitive level that when we step back far enough, we can see that everything on Earth is moving forward beautifully. It is up to us to remain open to inspiration... and open to love. As singer/songwriter Michael Stipe from the musical group REM puts it, "It's the end of the world as we know it, And I feel fine."
Wishing you may discover just how good your life can get,
Cynthia Sue Larson
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Cynthia Sue Larson helps people tap into the extraordinary powers that lie within them to create their best lives and find out how good it can get by transforming from accidental manifestors into conscious reality shifters.
Cynthia's popular ezine, RealityShifters News, is eagerly awaited each month by more than 4,500 subscribers world-wide. She has participated in research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and provided camera design advice for Aura Imaging System. Her articles have appeared in numerous magazines suchas Parabola and Well Being Journal, and she has been featured on radio shows such as BBC South's "Mike's Mysteries." Cynthia received a B.A. degree in physics from U.C. Berkeley and an M.B.A. degree from San Francisco State University.
Cynthia is the author of the young adult novel, Karen Kimball & the Dream Weaver's Web. And her first non-fiction book, Aura Advantage: How the Colors in Your Aura Can Help You Attain What You Desire and Attract Success and her Aura Healing Meditations CD can help you feel your best and understand the energies all around you.
Copyright © 2008 Cynthia Sue Larson
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