What feelings are you experiencing this summer in the month of July? Have they touched you deeply and if so, why? When do they arise and where are they now? Can you access them at will and if so, how? These questions and others ask things that are ultimate and seek to make a difference in our lives. These questions however, seem rarely to be asked or answered. They challenge us to look within when we’d rather look without. They invite new ways of being and doing.They seek our essence, our soul. 

Strangely, it seems to me, we weren’t trained to know that everything begins with an essence within. My early training taught me that everything began and begins with God  who lives somewhere called Heaven that is far away and  inaccessible until we die physically. The thought that everything begins with Essence, which can be found within everything, was a thought that didn’t come to me until I was well into adulthood. The thought that God is Essence and is everywhere all the time was a revelation.

Take a moment to sit deeply with the feeling of Acceptance. After you read this paragraph close your eyes and feel the affirmation of your Being by permitting yourself to embrace yourself. Close your eyes and feel the rhythm of your heart. Put your index finger and thumb together, both hands. Wrap your arms around your body and embrace yourself as if you were a child. Feel the slow gentle energy that’s coming through you from the Essence within. Feel the infinite life-giving energy! Breathe with it. Be with it.  

I’m presently sitting in an office that’s cool and sheltered from the July sun and the ninety degree temperatures. I’m listening to some sweet music sung by female voices that’s like an adult lullaby. It’s soothing, swaying, gentle and flowing in a smooth groove. Closing my eyes I’m inside my Self, soul dancing with the trees in a cool breeze with ease. The music shifts and I’m on the shore of a large body of water with palm trees, children, the wind, angelic choirs and lots of smiling faces full of soulful graces.

Summer’s Soul is always an essence within the waves, the water, the earth, the flowers and the trees. It’s always a way of seeing and being, a sense of freeing that transports us into the deep reaches of space we call grace where we don’t have to keep pace with any race defined by anyone. It’s the inner secret place that’s always here, always now, always teaching us how to be free to begin again with infinite possibilities wherever we are. It’s the choir, the silence, the bird’s song, the river, the night sky, the all! 

If this is all true and it’s where everything begins and we’re apart of it and it lives in us as we live in it, we don’t have to allow ourselves to be influenced by the energies that seek to take us down. We can stop wherever we are and drop into this ever present divining star that lives within the acorn shell we call ourselves. To be still, trust, open and present is to be discerning, relaxed, observant and processing along a path that leads us Home. It’s a journey of years without the fears that divert our energies and cause us tears. It’s the Soul of Life that sees us through every strife offering Life, anew!

• Go back to the third paragraph and do the exercise again today. Allow it to become one of your primary exercises everyday. Notice how it helps you find your way Home.
• When you find yourself not being connected to your Essential Self; stop, look, listen and remember the Soul, that which is interconnected and responsible for all you hold dear. Return within and smile while you move on to begin again and again and again.
• When you’re having a ‘bad‘ day or moment, stop and drop in on the Essence within. Stay with it for awhile until you can begin to make the moment better, better, better. . . .