Other Minds From Ancient Cultures

Today I went to an exhibit on “Peruvian Gold” sponsored by the National Geographic Society.

Incredible workmanship.

A philosophy in which 26,000 artisans supported 6,000 elite.

Full-time work on textiles, gold, silver, copper, ceramics for entire lifetimes.

A completely different emphasis on what is important in society from our modern Western culture.

The work in discovering the artifacts and putting the story of this ancient culture together is mind-boggling.

What an incredible discipline archeology is.

It brings so much insight into how we are living today by contrast.

I am so moved by the experience of getting to see inside another time and place.

The devotion through art and artifacts is profound.

Those artisans must have had an incredibly deep sense of satisfaction through such intricate, exacting and beautiful work.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Acting from"Quiet"

I was all set to go an event, my car was loaded the night before with all my supplies, I had laid out my clothes, gotten money to make change, and the next morning my body let me know that all was not well, and I was unable to participate in my plans.

As I started feeling better during the day, I listened for anything I needed to know.

I discovered that there was a critical element missing that I wanted to include in my product line.

I began working on it, and it started coming together over the next several days.

I am completely satisfied over the new additions and the deep philosophy that is portrayed in the products.

This quiet time has afforded me the opportunity to look beyond making a living or making money.

I was very tied up in that process while I was raising my children and providing for all our needs.

Now there is a greater need, to look beyond the superficial value of what I am doing to the contribution I can make through doing it.

Everything needs to support the greater value, the contribution to a view of life.

I am certainly willing to be quiet and keep listening and take action as I am directed.

I know I will feel good about what I am doing when everything truly is in place, and then it will happen effortlessly.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Let It Blow Right Through You

I was standing up and resisting and hating the fact that once again I was dealing with the dragged up memories of the past.

I had gotten so much farther along, but then, with the holidays, the dreaded memories came back.

My husband reminded me to just “let it blow right through me” instead of giving myself something to resist and fight against.

I was able to take his advice and to get on with my holiday baking.

He wrapped presents.

We will be ready to mail them later this evening.

We can let this part of the holidays move along in a harmonious and gentle way.

We will be grateful that we choose to remember and celebrate our adult children and our grandchildren.

We will be grateful that we have always celebrated them in the ways that we can, and that that is sufficient.

We will not judge ourselves or anyone else.

We will let all that “just blow right through us” and get on with our sense of celebration.

And then we will find a quiet way to spend the actual holiday, free from any of the dreaded memories of the past.

We will choose our own path through the cultural traditions and the media harassed “enhancement” of them.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Permanence

The perception of differences between permanent and transient states of thought is becoming the deep question of today.

Destroying the undesirable conditions of today’s world is occurring through a higher perception of what actually is permanent.

The temporary ways of control and exploration are certainly still evident.

But the higher approach, because it is permanent, is the winning hand.

Awareness express through the outrage at social repression is changing acts of regression into progress.

Now that intelligence and consciousness are aligning together with compassion and wisdom on a world-wide basis, we are seeing the unstoppable wave of progress all over the world.

The old modes and the thought-regimes which support them are toppling and decaying from the inside.

There is nothing to withstand the reality and manifestation of this new consciousness as it moves from within to the outside expression.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

The Reward of Finding Our Way

Deep inside each of us is a basic and detailed identity.

This is our individuality.

We may have no knowledge of this, caught up as we are in all the demands of day-to-day living.

But at some time, when these break down due to personal inadequacies, overwhelming demands, stress, or just a feeling of a need for something else, we have the opportunity to look within.

As we do, we can see who is actually in there living this life we have constructed for ourselves on the outside.

When we begin to listen to this inside guide, we find we have not been living at all in accordance with our deep feelings and goals, even though we didn’t realize we had some.

When we finally give ourselves the time to listen and discover what is inside us, we are given the opportunity to make some changes.

If we accept, and often, it is impossible not to given the steps that led us here in the first place, we are then shown how to take the steps to harmonize our lives.

Our life begins to feel better as we harmonize the inside goals with the outer steps.

The outer life begins to take on what is deep within in our true character.

We become nicer, easier to be around, more fulfilled and whole.

The atmosphere we design for ourselves is uplifting and happy.

We learn how to release stress and send it far away from us, not just as momentary relief, but as part of a rebuilding plan.

This is a much better way to live.

It is worth all the disorientation we may feel while enacting it.

Reconciling the without to the within is our essential need and gives us the life we desire and were meant to live.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Being In Tune

Sometimes you find yourself doing something that makes sense to you and then you find out later that you are in tune with something much larger.

The last couple of years that I taught music to pre-schoolers, I began my class in a way that allowed them to transition from their previous activity.

I had them take three deep breaths of inspiration.

I have continued blogging about this (www.takethreedeepbreaths.blogspot.com).

The first deep breath is inspiration for yourself.

The second deep breath is inspiration for all the people that we know.

The third deep breath is inspiration for all the people that we don’t even know all over the planet.

At a workshop today, given by Howard Martin, co-founder of Heart-Math, I listened to many nuggets from research which inform us that our heart’s intelligence is our deepest guide.

One of the things which I noted was that the attitudes that we hold about ourselves and others extend in a scientifically measurable way.

The distance can be three to four feet, eighteen feet or more and to an unlimited distance, depending on the study.

That is how I feel in tune with the practice I led my pre-school students in for several years, and which I still practice today.

We are sending out information about ourselves and extending it to others who we know and who we don’t know.

Shaping our information and attitudes and withholding judgement goes much farther than we might have imagined.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Musical Retrograde

In an operetta by Paul Hindemith’s, (I have searched for its name but cannot find it), the action takes place up to a certain point, and at the climax, the entire opera is sung and acted backwards, or in what is called retrograde.

I feel like that is happening simultaneously in my life as I am continuing to move forward in a different line from the one which I started on.

The old life is backing out of my way even though it makes gallant attempts to restage itself, but there are no longer any actors nor audience.

I am writing a new score, and I like all the new parts.

All the action takes place in the present moment.

I validate it with my decisions, which I like, and my values, which I also endorse.

Lest this sound too self-centered, it is not.

I am simply aware that I am making the choices which I wish to see, instead of acting out the old dimensions which were around me in the past.

So my musical retrograde is over.

It is becoming easier to draw the curtain on the performance and go off to write entirely new scenes which I enjoy.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com