It is an amazing experience to be a witness to how quickly time is passing.  This has been an incredible year.....I have traveled and taught in Bahia and Serbia, I have celebrated both my 80th year, and my tenth wedding anniversary. My oldest grand daughter Danielle graduated first in her class from college, and my youngest granddaughter Samantha has celebrated her 21 first birthday.  These have been just some of the gifts and blessings that I am grateful for.

All of  my memories and the gifts of my  teachers are very present with me in this moment. My letters to you are the reflections of the happenings of my past month....woven with highlights and thoughts from these experiences.  Recording  painful conflicts in my Daily Review are what I consider the opportunities my soul has chosen to bring the light of remembering into the darkness.

I read this thought somewhere, and I want to share it.

When I remove  my CRYing (my false belief  that I am a victim.)

from the  CRISIS...and when I own my co-creation of this incident and accept the

 IS ness of the happening:  I am at peace..  This  awareness of accepting responsibility of our creation is the beginning of claiming back of our original power. A crisis occurs when we have not take responsibility for our choices.

When I was training to be a therapist my teacher  told me the story of Michelangelo.  When Michelangelo was asked how he had sculpted the David he responded: 

" the David was ALREADY THERE...I ONLY HAD TO CHIP AWAY THE EXCESS MARBLE.: .  The David was already there.

That is how I learned to practice my Helpership.: In each of you who have come to me, I see G-d's perfect creation.  My job is to chip away (very gently) all the defenses, all the false beliefs that are hiding G-d's work of art, and to hold and ground you in your essential nature.  My purpose is to gently chip away all that is not G-d's creation.....to breathe with you into the darkness and to allow your spirit to shine through.

I am grateful that you are in my life.  I am learning, through our times together. that the sole purpose for my work is to reinforce my own belief system, and mirror it back to you by example.

This poem by Rumi  illustrates this for me:

                                 "The Sun never says"

                              Even after all this time,

                                     The Sun never says to the Earth:

                                         " You owe me!"

                              Look what happens with a love like that,

                                           It lights the whole sky."

Please take the time to sit quietly, and ask yourself the following questions:

Today are you willing to enter into the Grace of gratitude?

Today are you willing to let go of your history, your blame and your victimhood?

Today are you willing to remember who you are?

Today are you willing to open your heart to yourself?

This prose poem by Octavio Paz touches me deeply:

   "After chopping off all the arms that have reached out to me; after boarding up all the windows and doors; after filling all the pits with poisoned water; after building my house on the rock of a NO inaccessible to flattery and fear; after cutting out my tongue and eating it; after hurling handfuls of silence and monosyllables of scorn at my loves; after forgetting my name and the name of my birthplace and the name of my race; after judging and sentencing myself to perpetual waiting and perpetual loneliness, I heard against the stones of my dungeon of syllogisms the humid, tender, insistent onset of spring."

Today are you willing to hear your soul's call.

Today are your willing to be born again into the light?

Happy Birthday.

"I say love it is a flower...

and you its only seed."

Dear G-d. 

This moment, and every moment, help me not to forget

that I am here to love.

Help me to remember that I am of You, and here to serve You.

Fill me with the willingness not to enter into fear's illusion and to be in reality.

Make me an Instrument of Your peace.

So be it,

Barbara