Category: freedom

only love, always love.

by shollandsworth, posted in Choose love, Faith, freedom, Hope, Light, Love, Uncategorized

With every word you speak, you are voting for peace and love or fear and hate. When you speak about the problem, you are feeding the dysfunction. You can just as easily shift your words to speak about the solution, and that choice moves the mark. We are residents of the universe, and there are certain universal laws that exist whether you choose to recognize them or not. When you try to work outside of these laws, it is more difficult than swimming upstream. When you choose to work with these laws, everything that you do becomes imbued with power, it becomes potent and effective. Love is a higher vibration than fear and hate and therefore can transmute it. Peace will always trump violence. To many, this seems idealistic and naive, but that is simply because it is misunderstood. Just as the dark is merely an absence of light, and one must only light a candle or flick a switch and the dark isn’t simply obscured, it is eliminated. The dark stands in the way of the light, but the light is ever present. It is merely a choice, an action.

This can seem like a losing battle, but that is simply because more light is being called for. This world is calling for more love, more peace, more light, more hope, more unity, more healing. It is no longer okay for those who know better to do nothing. We cannot be lazy about our convictions, about our truths. We cannot love with half of our hearts. We cannot love conditionally. Our love must encompass all BEINGS. Our love must not be dependent on the actions of others. Our love must go first, second and always. We must always meet hate with love, hurt with love, rudeness with love, sadness with love, misunderstanding with love, fear with love, judgement with love. There is a tipping point. If you take a large container of black paint and begin pouring white in, it will seem for quite a while as if nothing is happening, but the tipping point comes where the paint is now light. It is just a matter of the amount and the time. More LOVERS must rise up, and must stay the course. A war against anything is always a losing battle. But a fight FOR something will always find a way. It is always a matter of our perspective. It is time to rally for peace, for love, for equality across the board, unity, etc.

The world is in such disarray at the moment, but there is so much grace in that. It is holding up a mirror for us to look at. It may not be pretty or comfortable. There are certain uncomfortable truths which must be seen, acknowledged and accepted. We must take a look at the dysfunction in order to allow it to permeate our beings in a way which will drive us to change things finally. We have tried to turn a blind eye, wear rose colored glasses, deny, rationalize, water down and change the story to fit our levels of comfort. That is no longer an option here. This chaos is here to shake us and wake us! Let it! Take a look at it, sit with how it makes you feel, process it and then shrink it down to a micro scale. In all things….take it down to a cellular level, a self level.

This world needs more love. Where are you withholding love from yourself? And then how do you withhold it from others in your daily interactions? It starts with you, then extends from you and then extends from there. The denial of this is what leads to terrorism and war. The adoption of this is the beginning of wisdom and the path of the solution. Open your eyes, open your hearts, open your minds. Where are you denying yourself peace? Where do you fail to extend peace to others? Start there. The world is unjust. Where are you unfair with yourself? How are you unjust in your actions and interactions? How can you increase your justice in the words you speak with yourself and others? How can you raise your level of justice in every discourse you have?

You have no idea what someone is dealing with in their life. It is almost always if not always those who are the most unloveable who need love the most. And their interaction with you has nothing to do with you. Rather it is a reflection of their relationship with themselves. If we only love when it is easy and love those who are easy to love, we do not move the mark. We do not increase the vibration, increase the love, increase the peace. We keep things the same. At least you are not meeting love with hate, but you do not heal yourself, others, the planet or the collective in any meaningful way. It may be tiny and imperceptible, or it may be life altering. Either way, it is powerful and necessary.

It is great to recognize someone’s light, love, effort, etc. We have begun to believe as a society that we shouldn’t reach out, connect, compliment, exercise kindness, etc. I cannot tell you how often I exercise a compliment to a stranger and someone with me says that they were thinking the same thing but didn’t want to make the receiver of the gesture uncomfortable, or were afraid they would seem weird, or a million other things. Every time, I am shocked. How did we get to a point in society where we are afraid or hesitant to express love and kindness? I noticed that I would often think it but didn’t express it. Now compliments fly out of my mouth as soon as I think them. I have trained myself to do this, and sometimes forget, but it is such a simple way to stand for love, to exercise peace, to shift the vibration of the planet. While simple, don’t underestimate how powerful. Rather than coming from “what is the least I can give,” lets consciously move the mark and give more always in all ways.

Go the extra mile. Go first. Go further. Go again and again. Meet resistance with acceptance. Meet unkindness with understanding. Don’t just embrace differences, celebrate them. What a boring world this would be if all there were were red roses. A red rose would have zero value if a sunflower did not exist, if we knew not weeds. We need the totality of existence to have the experience of beauty.  A world without beauty would be pointless, lifeless, soulless. We would not know joy without pain, ecstasy without suffering, gain without loss. We need our differences, but our differences do not make us different. They make us unique. Each is equally valuable. Each is sacred. It is time for us to band together and love that which differs from us as much as we love that which is like us.

Rather than get sucked in to the temptation to speak about all that is wrong with the world and humanity, lets come together and speak of all that is right, in all of the incredible ways that we can make this journey we are all traveling together better. Peace which excludes some, excludes all. Love which limits, lessens. Justice for a few is justice for no one. Use your voice. Use it for love. Use it for peace. Use it relentlessly. All my love. One love.

 

 

 

 

avoidance and destiny

by shollandsworth, posted in authenticity, avoidance, destiny, Empowerment, Faith, freedom, Growth, Light, Love, Motivation, positivity, Power, Self Development, Soul, Trust, Truth

Where in your life are you in avoidance? What are you resisting whether consciously or unconsciously. It most likely holds the keys to your greatest breakthroughs and even your destiny. At this point in life, many of us are aware of the existence of our ego. The poor ego has gotten a bad wrap. People want to make an enemy of it, kill it even. I like to think of the ego as a toddler. Toddlers are adorable, certainly not bad, in fact, they need our love, protection and guidance. We would never give a toddler the steering wheel and let them drive. So why would you allow the ego to steer your life? The ego has one main goal: to keep us safe because it love us, and they believe that staying where we are accomplishes that. When I was little, fear was all I knew, it consumed me. I remember having diving class, and I dreaded it. I was a natural swimmer, a fish. My parents recognized it in me and encouraged me, and I was even pursued pretty heavily all my life by swim coaches. I probably had the innate ability to take it to the highest level, but I had all of these irrational fears which are not relevant here. Back to the story….I recall my first lesson where we were to jump off of the low dive. I absolutely did not want to…actually I desperately wanted to, but I was paralyzed in fear. I kept walking to the edge and freezing. Eventually the instructor coaxed me off the edge, and it was game over after that. Shortly thereafter I was doing back dives and one and a half flips off the high dive. I found freedom in the dive, I connected to my natural gifts, to my essence. You see, the toddler in me wanted me to stay safe while the higher self in me knew what was to be gained by bailing off a perfectly steady board into the unknown…everything.

In my life, this willingness to dive led me to many beautiful cliffs as well as many exciting adventures. That willingness embedded itself in my spirit and has made it possible for me to take risks that I otherwise would never have considered. Not every breakthrough lie through huge life changing leaps. Sometimes it is the smallest tweak in a habit or thought pattern. It can be a chore that needs to be ended to, or a scary business opportunity. If it creates discomfort in you, be willing to take a look at it. Avoidance always means something, and it can almost always be traced back to our little well meaning but misguided homie, the ego. We must always be willing to turn the light on and look at that which we would prefer not to, and always without judgement. Simply observe, take note, and choose consciously, wisely, bravely.

Do the words someone said create an irritation in you? Why? What are you not wanting to see in yourself or in your life? Does it bother you that someone is living their life differently from yours? Could it mean that your highest self wishes you would choose courageously to step out onto a different path? Are you afraid that you are wrong in your beliefs? It always means something otherwise it wouldn’t create friction within you. And it typically calls for a change in perspective, change in beliefs, or change in self, in action. Avoidance is our compass, our north star if we simply allow it to guide us. We have been led to unconsciously believe that if we ignore something it will go away. The truth is, it won’t. It never does. In fact, the longer we wait, the more we ignore and avoid, the steeper the price we will have to pay to change whatever it is. The more effort we will have to exert, the more faith we will have to exercise. Get the lesson now, take the guidance. It is all a gift, it is all for you. There is nothing to fear.

Walk to the edge of the diving board, the cliff. Dangle your toes…bail off that thang and find your freedom, find your liberation, find your purpose, find your bliss. Its all there waiting to embrace you. You have everything to gain. Love and light homies.

authenticity is the way.

by shollandsworth, posted in authenticity, Empowerment, freedom, Growth, Hope, Light, Love, positivity, Power, Rebirth, Self Development, Soul, Truth, Uncategorized

More collaboration, less comparison, less competition. We have become so ingrained in our society to buy into the competition lie. We believe that for us to win, someone else must lose. That when someone else gains, there is somehow less available for us. That also leads to comparison. We look to those who achieve, win, etc and begin to believe that we must somehow be like them to also win. We slowly begin to chip away at our uniqueness, at our perfect and valid and necessary expression of life and become a ghost of ourselves, a shadow, an eclipse. We begin feeling less, thinking less. We become programmed and hollow. We put on masks, try on other’s clothes, thoughts and beliefs. We no longer differentiate between our own unique thoughts and feelings and those put on us by our peers or by society. We become sheep. We no longer live and act from a place of masterpiece. We were created. Specially. Specifically and Uniquely. We were painted, sculpted, written and photographed. We are art.

The more you shed the inauthentic and claim your authenticity, the more resistance you may begin to encounter. Claim it anyway. Make authenticity the path, the way. Be authenticity. Breathe authenticity. Speak it. There is no need to fight against the resistance. Make space for it. Smile at it. Breathe through it. Direct love to it. Your conviction to live from that space quietly gives permission for others to do the same. And whether you ever directly get to experience the currents of that particular wave, it happens anyway. It is a great gift to give the world.

You cannot be successful living in someone else’s skin, beliefs or convictions. You cannot be whole, you cannot be effective. Begin to create rather than to consume. To be a force, you must stand silently, peacefully and powerfully in your own truth and let the truth make the noise. Let that truth set the world ablaze. Let that truth heal those with ears to hear. You have a specific, special and unique impact to make. Make your tracks. Let others follow those tracks until they find their own. Light the way. Love and light.

Lay Your Burdens Down…

by shollandsworth, posted in Empowerment, Faith, freedom, Growth, Hope, Light, Love, Motivation, positivity, Power, Rebirth, Self Development, Soul, Truth, Uncategorized

I had a very big day yesterday. I have been “broken” for a long time now. Although I have been committed to choosing my mindset, overcoming and rising up, my mind and spirit still carried the residue of what my body had been through over the last few years. While I had chosen my perspective rather than wearing the one given to me by others or by my unconscious self, I was still haunted by the events. It is not far fetched or unreasonable that when you go from “wonder woman” to near death in an instant that it would affect you in more ways than one. It is not shocking that the time spent running from annihilation during my coma would leave a trace of darkness somewhere in my psyche. It makes sense that being treated and handled with extreme care and caution following the series of events would become a new way of life. No one would blame me if I stayed in that place. No one would blame me but why would I ever choose to stay there? I think where we typically go wrong is first and foremost in the unconscious. Most of us are living and operating from an unconscious reactionary state. We are unaware of what we are thinking, feeling, choosing, etc. Things begin to change dramatically the day you become a force in your own life and create your life rather than react to it. We look at all the evidence that we have gathered from the current circumstances which are only there based on our thoughts and choices (whether unconscious or not) up until now. The second we choose to change, choose to become the force, circumstances will begin to shift dramatically. We have to give our lives time to catch up before we make conclusions about what it all means.

Let my life be living proof for you. I was not handed anything on a silver platter. No one came to save me. I screamed and yelled at God, I begged God, I ignored God. This Being, this Force, this Entity loved me enough to allow me to save myself. I can only imagine how difficult that would be to watch someone you love so deeply in such despair and not save them from it. But that is a true and deep love. A love that is willing to sit in its own pain so that the object of their love and creation can be truly born. God sat by, and I believe sat directly in front of me breathing love and strength into me while I found my own. You see….my entire life, I was seeking my own strength. On the outside looking in, it could have looked like I had had it. I had my shallow strengths temporarily taken from me so that I could discover the strengths that could never be taken or destroyed. I stand here in immense gratitude for the fruits of that battle, I stand here a butterfly emerged from my cocoon.

I say all of that to say this….Lay your burdens down. Resist the urge to continue hitting the replay button. What happened to you is just that…it happen(ed). Past tense. It was then, this is now. It is over and done. You are not your experiences or your circumstances. You are what you choose to do with and about them. You are who you become from the journey. As a coach and trainer, I am forever hearing people talk about their weak wrists, nagging ankle injury that they have had since childhood. I will never forget an amazing client I had who on day one of training with me spent fifteen minutes explaining every physiological issue they have had since birth involving both their personal and what they believed to be genetic issues. I listened and smiled and led them straight into and through those issues and watched them come out the other side without having to carry those particular burdens any longer. Your freedom is through. Your freedom is in letting go. You are not chained to your finite experiences. You are the creator, you are the author. You have a choice and you have the power. All of my love and light to each and every one of you today. Blessings. SaraMae