Come back home…

… and let go of the fruits. What is love calling forth from you?

Silence and Growth

Dear Courageous Soul,

There are these days when you draw back into your own being. Life energy is directed to inward matters. On the outside you become silent, very silent.

But on the inside a whole world appears. Your system is flooded by fireworks of associations and interrelations. Aha experiences occur, pictures take form. What a rich time! Growth is happening.

Usually we overlook this precious time of development and increasing awareness. People ask us: “Everything OK? You’re so silent and withdrawn.” But you just don’t have the words to describe the precious new wisdom just sprouting into your being.

When you recognize yourself as inseparable part of the vast Mystery of Life, all these “intense times” become time of apprenticeship. Insights (cognitive, emotional, mental, spiritual, …) are sparks of increased awareness and consciousness. Your horizon widens.

You are on your path of dharma. You get the lesson. You celebrate Life. You bow to the Beauty of all-that-is. I celebrate you, precious soul. I am so happy to walk this planet with you! ❤ ❤

Connected in the vast Mystery of Life,
Uli, your soul sister

Dharma Goddess Lakshmi

Dharma (right living):
Your Dharma is the unique vibration of you
fully expressed in the infinite matrix of life.
The longing to show up and to contribute 
with who we are
is shared by all of life. 
Look at the flowers, the animals, look at children;
everybody wants to take part, with all we got.
So why do we make it so personal?
Why do we make it about “being good enough”,
or the “right moment”, or “getting it”?

Lakshmi gives you powerful keys of how to connect with and to fully step into your dharma.
Your dharma is unique yet much bigger than the personal. Dharma is Shakti –
pure creativity – unleashed, and once aligned with our dharma,
we instantly find fulfillment 
independent of the outcome or the form it takes.

Full text on www.awakeningwomen.com

Join Chameli Ardagh and global circle of Awakening Women at the Lakshmi Online Sadhana to learn more about the feminine path to your dharma.

Tend the Seed

The Gift is indestructible. It is a seed. We are not required to be God. We are not required to create the seed. Only to plant it wisely and well.
~ Stephen Cope (in: The Great Work of Your Life)

You carry a gift in you – your gift – your seed, your medicine for the world, your gift to humankind. How relieving to recognize that we don’t have to make it, this gift of ours! It is here, it has always been here. Rather, our task it to tend the seed, to nourish it with water, sun, and love, and to cultivate it by trusting it.

Cultivating the seed and later the sprout is a metaphor for taking consistent decisions that sustain our gift and our dharma. Once we “know” our dharma cognitively, emotionally, and intuitively, this life purpose acts as a lighthouse for us.

Decisions that we take throughout our life can either lead towards the dharma lighthouse or in a different direction. Nobody forces us to take all our decisions towards the lighthouse, but… Individuals who consistently take choices in favor of their dharma, experience tremendous support by the whole universe.

Will you tend your sprout, even when snow falls again? Or do you loose trust: “Oh, it’s doomed. The cold snow will destroy it.” How deeply do you trust your seed, your sprout, your gift, your dharma?

Take an inquiry of your daily decisions whether they lead towards the dharma lighthouse or not. You’ll find the size of your trust. It’s never too late to return to your seed or sprout and tend it with the love in your heart.

Natural Beauty

Your dharma will never ask you to wear a mask or play a role (unless you’re an actress / actor 😉 …) On the contrary, the more you live your dharma the less masks you’re wearing. In order to return to the unique flavour that you are it is necessary to let go of all the copy-and-paste identities that you carry around. When you come back into your very own dharma flow, you will be truly yourself – every day a bit more your true self – showing yourself to the world just as you are. No need to pretend or build up facades. You stand self-confident in your very nature with all the experiences you’ve been gathering so far.

When you blossom into your dharma, you do this in your natural beauty. Just as flowers do. All the pictures here on this website are taken by myself – in my everyday life – they are not at all photoshopped. I want to show the blossoms in their natural beauty: They are role models for us in standing in their unique beauty, in their unique expression, in their unique qualities, in their unique being.

Do we dare to stand as raw, as naked, as vulnerable, as strong, as natural, as self-confident as they do?

Love, oh Love

There are days when I “see” that literally everything is made out of Love.

Work is love made visible. (Khalil Gibran)

For win-win-situations this is easy to see. And there are cases when Love takes an ugly, dirty, scary mask. But behind this mask Love is at work.

The fundamental Love holding the whole universe is not always pink, glittery, shiny, and radiant – as we often anticipate that an enlightened state of being would look like. Love can be found in the messy, contracted, and even hard life.

So when I start doubting this fundamental Love and its existence, I take a step out, I lean back for a few moments. I focus on how could Love make itself visible in this very situation? What or whom does this person love – what could be the motivation for her or his behavior?

The art is to stay as open as possible regarding the answers. It could be love for oneself. It could be love for one’s child. It could be love for power. It could be love for one’s dead grandparents. It could be love for money. It could be love for disregarded groups of our society. It could be love for one’s own life. It could be love for an abstract principle. It could be love for a good life. It could be love for the orang-utans in the rainforest. It could be love for music. It could be love for something completely different.

The second ingredient of art is to refrain from judging this motivation, instead to stay focussed on Love: see Love working through us, watch how Love manifests itself here and there, again and again, everywhere and always. The art is to keep our eyes on Love.

What an amazing spiritual practice it is to witness Love at work expressing itself as Life.

~ This is dedicated to Sonja, Rose, and Monika. ~

Letter to a Courageous Soul

Dear Courageous Soul,

The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given,
 the door will open. (Rumi)

I miss you. And I miss your enthusiasm – in the world – and for the world. I don’t write this to cause any action from your side. I just feel that your flavor is missing in the world. The world really misses you. Your spark. Your spice. Your smile. Your love. Your uniqueness deeply and completely expressed by you.

I am completely convinced that we cannot be “off” our dharma. We all live our vocation in every single minute of our incarnation. But we can live it half-heartedly or immersed in enthusiasm.

Chameli Ardagh once quoted the Mexican shamans:

When you loose your joy, you loose your power.

So I ask you: Why are you here? What does the Divine want to express uniquely through you? What is your golden trace of beauty and love?

Let’s surf the wave together.

The wound is where the light enters. (unknown)

Yes, yes, yes! Broken. Yes. Wounded. Yes. Fearful. Yes.

And: If the brokeness will never go away, if the wounds will never go away, if fear will never go away – will you still be holding back your gift and your enthusiasm?

I miss you on a very very deep level. A level beyond words. A level beyond face to face meetings and conversations. I really miss you – in a way I will never be able to express.

Eternally connected in love,
Uli, your Soul Sister

How do you feed your dharma?

What do you do – on a daily basis – to feed your dharma?

To feel the deep longing in one’s heart and to take a decision is one thing. The other thing is to stay with it. To commit to what you really want on a daily basis. To feed your dharma plant every day. To practice dedication. To stay with your commitment.

How do you feed your dharma plant? Do you water it? Do you offer it sunshine? How much do you show your love to it?

It is a very personal thing how water – sunshine – love look like. It might be that you light a candle for this longing in your heart. It might be that you exercise in the fresh air. It might be that you ask for support from experts. It might be that you get up and rent an office of your own. It might be that you take a nap after lunch. It might be that you write a blog post. It might be that you put a dharma symbol onto your altar. It might be that you write your dharma sentence on a piece of paper and put it on your fridge door. It might be that you take singing classes. It might as well be something completely different…

So let me ask you again: How do you feed your dharma?

Your dharma is your uniqueness

The word dharma points to what is often called the cosmic order. It does not mean that you are a puppet on a string carrying out some plan made up by some higher being.

This term rather wants to remind us that we are inseparable from the invisible mystery that holds all-that-is. You and me and every form – we all are embodiments of the vast consciousness striving to birth itself over and over again. Your dharma is your “role” in the Divine Choreography of Life, your spice, your flavor, your uniqueness, your thread, your specific vibration, your fingerprint, your unique set of qualities, your medicine, your gift.

There are so many words we use to (try to) describe this ineffable unique quality of our being. They all show us the way to our own divine nature, our interconnectedness with all-that-is.

Rather than making up the meaning of our lives, we could ask the Mystery of Life: How do you want to express yourself through me today? How do you want to use my unique flavor for the good of all beings? What song do you want to play on the instrument that I am?

This is where you are

Once we commit to consciously and fully live our dharma, life changes. We feel full of energy, motivation, enthusiasm, love, esprit, joy, freedom, … But still it is a human life. “After expansion contraction will come.” (Chameli Ardagh) I promise you: There will be days where you might feel stressed, overwhelmed, unmotivated, tired, full of doubt, fearful, sad, …

Whatever you feel: This is where you are RIGHT NOW. This is where you are to live your dharma RIGHT NOW. This is the place from where you’ll take the next step RIGHT NOW. Yes, we prefer to feel good and expanded instead of stuck and shrunk. But this is our decision. Every situation, every thought, every feeling is holy in the Divine Eyes.

On days when you feel expanded, you probably won’t read these lines, because you are in the flow anyway! 🙂

On days when you feel contracted: What if you’d lean back for a moment, let go of all concepts of how-it-should-be and adore the mystery that you are alive? Let yourself be taken away by the miracle that the sun shines (even tough it might be hidden behind clouds). Find a way to acknowledge the miracle of how your body works. Isn’t it amazing that those fingers can move, that you can feel the breeze on your skin, that your eyes read these words, that your heart beats? Isn’t it amazing that the Earth moves? Isn’t it astounding and mind-blowing that the Universe exists?

“After contraction expansion will come.” (Chameli Ardagh) I promise you: There will be days where you are in the flow again, where you feel deeply aligned with the Divine Choreography of Life, where you feel like flying.

It is up to us to let go of the resistance and align ourselves with the Flow of Life.