Tornado

Posted on August 12, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

Free Google Photos

I play with tornadoes in my head. I don’t have a good explanation for this. It’s been going on for about three years. When I say play with them, I mean, I imagine riding them or collapsing them down around me or even dancing around them. I think it started when someone told me our energy body could expand the length of one to two football fields. That’s one big energy field. It intrigued that part of my brain that is Xena Warrior Princess, the part of me that likes the idea of being powerful. Clearly, because who plays with tornadoes in their head?

It happens most often when I’m working out or dancing in my home. Something about all that physical energy triggers all this awesome mental energy and I’m whipping those bad boy tornadoes into my command in no time. A few days ago, I had such a session dancing in my house and afterwards went to run some errands. As is often the case, my mind was churning on all sorts of things I need to deal with or figure out. I was beating myself up about something when it dawned on me I play with tornadoes in my head. That seems the most natural thing in the world to do, but curtailing my critical, judgmental, whining mind seems daunting. Something about the incongruity of that caught my attention. I can play with tornadoes and wield them to my will, but stopping myself from being angry about the guy who cut me off on the interstate is challenging?

Einstein said if you want to be brilliant use your imagination. If you want to be really brilliant, really, really use your imagination. What if dealing with all this weirdness we’ve got rocking in our brains is no more than playing with tornadoes? If in our imaginary mind we can do anything, than why can’t we apply that same focus, sense of play and energy toward wrangling in our real mental storms? What if it’s all an illusion? Tornadoes, ideas of being unloveable, Roger Rabbit, I’m lazy, my spouse lied, I’m spiderman. Really, they are all just thoughts running around inside our skull. What would happen if we treated all our thoughts the same way? Imaginary characters we can play with or not. The choice is ours.

Night Hawk

Posted on August 6, 2013 by noellevignola Standard 1

Baby Cooper’s Hawk; Free Bing Photos

I hear the call of a young hawk in the twilight. It’s calling to it’s parents for food. It’s a distinct sound. Plaintive, persistent and young. It calls as if it has not eaten in days or with a sound one would associate with deep loneliness. But it is fed with great care by parents never truly out of sight. I have struggled, of late, to realize this is how I have been praying. Plaintive, persistent and with an immaturity difficult to face. It would be easy to allow this growing awareness to burn my wings and bring me down. Yet, the key piece of the analogy is the parent aloft and ever watchful. Equally persistence in it’s readiness to feed me what I need. My youthful demands do not change the parenting. It is steady, attentive and focused. I may pray like an eyas certain it will starve for food, but Source Energy patiently awaits and knows I am growing steadily into a great flyer.

Moth

Posted on August 5, 2013 by noellevignola Standard 1

Free Google Photos

A moth got into the house this morning. I noticed him because he was flopping around on the floor. His wings had likely gotten wet from the snow melt from the roof. I was about to toss him out again, but it’s only in the twenties and he couldn’t fly. I was sitting next to the gas fireplace which was on

looking at him in my hand. He must have felt the warmth of the fire as he suddenly spread out his wings so they could dry. I had the sudden image of seeing a butterfly do the same thing after a rain when I was a child. Spread its wings so the sun could dry them. I realized in my grief of late that, that is what I am doing. Spreading the wings of my heart in meditation and letting divine love warm me up and dry me off. I am too heavy to fly right now. I need to wait, open up and let the Universe warm and dry me for my next flight. I left the moth on the mantle. With luck he’ll leave my sweaters alone.

Blessed Toe

Posted on August 4, 2013 by noellevignola Standard 3

beautifully cracked… like me… Photography by Noelle

Blessings to my broken toe. I’ll confess I was angry with you over the past week for interfering in my work out and yoga practice, not to mention hindering my shoe selection. But this morning you didn’t hurt so much so I decided to try some yoga. Because of you I had to go slower. Be more thoughtful and focused about each pose. I had to be kinder and gentler with myself and pay attention to little things. I had to think of which poses I could do and as a result, pulled out some poses I hadn’t done in ages, which totally charged my practice. So thank you, broken toe. I had no idea what a blessing you were.

High Wire Act

Posted on August 4, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

We hang delicately in the now between what was and what hasn’t been. A circus performer on one foot, balancing gracefully on the high wire. This is what the Universe was made for. For you. In this moment. On this very breath of life filling you up. A ceaseless cycle of letting go, taking in, letting go, taking in. Raise your arms, turn on the wire and feel the power of each balancing motion. Feel how innately you know how to move in this moment. That at your core where all balance resides is a total knowing of how to take the next step. Know with certainty that there is no risk. The net is there, has always been there, will always be there. You are the spirited acrobat of the Great Circus Tent. The divine applauds in the stands with glee at your every move. You are divine grace and balance, in motion.

Passion

Posted on August 4, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

Re-posted from Enchanted Nature’s FB page

There are two states of living. One is alive, alert, curious, inquisitive, hungry, impassioned, in love and with the readiness of a child for the next possible moment to play. The other is to let go little by little all of the above, until you find your senses and your extraordinary mind dulled to the point of a plastic knife cutting a two-day old bagel.

Today I am everything I have ever been and in this day I have more than a million chances to discover someone in me I have never met. This is Wonderland and it was all made for me, as it was made for all of us. This is our adventure. Wake up everyone. It’s time to go out into the world and play.

Waking Up

Posted on August 4, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

Re-posted from Enchanted Nature’s Facebook page

I wake at the crack of dawn to hear a bird chirping continuously outside my window. He is calling all in his center of the world to wake up. I ponder when he’ll move on as I would love to go back to sleep. Still he sings. After awhile the sound begins to drift into my mental background. Becomes part of my brains now ongoing chatter since I’m up. This is what is happening to me daily with the divine. Source energy is ceaselessly calling me to wake up, and at first I hear, but call back how lovely is my slumber. And when the call does not penetrate it begins to be a part of the din inside my head. This is why I meditate. So that I can alertly and quietly hear the call. Wake up. You have slumbered long enough.

Shoo Fly

Posted on July 30, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

Re-posted from The Mind Unleashed Facebook Page

If I do not give THIS thought my attention, my emotions, my time than it has no power over me. It shapes no aspect of my life. Shoo! Shoo! Out with you. I do not entertain houseflies in my skull!

Dragonflies

Posted on July 30, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

Re-posted from Art For Ever Facebook Page

The dragonfly

Curious creature if you spend much time observing their structure. Flimsy really. Bent body that looks little more than a dry twig. Wings so translucent that you can see clearly through their veil of blues and greens at anything that lies beyond. Alight upon your hand and you’d mistake it’s presence for a dandelion seed, it has so little weight. A good wind should snap it in two.
And yet……. it doesn’t.
The dragonfly in all it’s frailty is one of the greatest fliers of all the Earth. Up, down, backward and forward. It dazzles us as it skims the surface of a lake, only a flicker to our eye.
We are the dragonfly, brilliantly translucent against a river of divine love. We appear to ourselves, at times, so frail and flimsy facing the forces of life’s challenges.
And yet…….we are not.
There is not a spirit that walks the Earth that is frail or broken. Even in-spite of our bent and dried up appearance. What we are can not be disturbed by even the greatest events of our lives, no matter how strong the winds of change.
You are capable of great adaption and changes of direction. You know this. Feel the flutter of your iridescent wings moving steadily in your chest. Your spirit moves in you with all the art of the great flier. It is no mistake you live by the wind moving steadily in and out, in and out of your wing like lungs. Embrace your bits of color and light refracting in the Universe. You were meant to dance, not hide amongst the reeds. Your presence on this Earth is one of the great mysteries of design and beauty.

Just like the dragonfly.

Patience and Crawdaddies

Posted on July 30, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

Stained glass at Living Arts Center in Denver: Photography by Noelle

As a child I was quite the tomboy, catching bull frogs in the lake behind my house or craw daddies in the creek. I still listen to frogs on summer nights to determine where they are and to what mate they call. I’m especially fond of finding crawfish in the streams that I hike. Spring has been slow to come to Colorado and the creek is running fast, deep, ice cold and swollen with snow melt. Not very hospitable for a crawfish. Still, I look. Today, I was about to turn away after quite some time standing, when it’s tail caught my eye as it scurried across the creek bed beneath a rock. Life! Spring is here!

I meditate so that I may cultivate the quiet, the patience, the awareness and the love for this moment. Even the long waiting part. Even if there’d been no crustacean. Even with the red wing blackbirds that squawk like old Bolsheviks into my ear from the thicket for my intrusion. May you live a long life my mud-digging friend. You lit up my heart tonight.