“To find our calling is to find the intersection between our own Deep Gladness and the world’s Deep Hunger.” –Fredrick Buechner

I recently attended a “Fierce Light” workshop where we were invited to share our boldest visions of how we’d like to serve the world. I shared two recurring dreams I’ve had over the past 10 years. In the first dream, I’m casting a golden net around the earth, shining light into the darkest corners by simply connecting the multitude of already existing brilliant sparks. In the second dream, I’m sitting around a table with a group of women joyfully giving away money to help people fund their ideas (and we’re all wearing nametags that say, Abundance Angel). I rushed off from the workshop for my grandson’s 2nd birthday party, feeling there was something not quite complete.

A few mornings later, I awoke at 3am with a fierce energy running through me and the message, “it’s time to step into your greatness…no more playing small!” Tears started flowing as I connected with the full scope of these two important dreams, along with a fear that I somehow wasn’t big enough. Then a sense of radiant peace washed through me as I realized I have everything before me, and within me, to create what I’m now calling my “Fierce Light Vision.” The peace turned to excitement when I realized that everything I’m doing is already in support of this vision but that the energy is just ready to amp up…and that I’ve created an amazing web of support to help meet the fullness of this vision in a new way.

When I planted the original seed of The Service Connection a little over 3 years ago, it was actually another version of those original two dreams. I envisioned women gathering in small circles around the world…stepping into our collective Greatness…receiving the courage, inspiration & financial support to live our boldest dreams…and doing this WHILE creating a stream of philanthropic funding for causes we care about.

I was fortunate that my partner Vasi, along with a circle of significant believers, stepped in to help ground the initial vision. For two years we planted, cultivated, watered, and in some cases tried to force the seed to bloom. This past year, we’ve been “incubating” as we explore and allow space to see where the vision wants to be planted. This has been a very challenging time for me, and often I’ve wanted to let go or give my vision to someone else. I now realize the importance of this time of allowing. I’m much more ready to step into the vision now than I was when it originally came through.

Tags: inspired service, sacred activism, The Service Connection

…let’s create an Arc of Love

As 2009 turned to 2010, I set an intention to be fully alive and more in service than ever before.  So far, the world has presented many opportunities to step into a fast-flowing current of doing.  In some ways, the needs of the world seem overwhelming, and it’s easy to get pulled into over-doing and giving until we’re exhausted.  For me, ‘riding the YES current’ is a reminder to rise from joyful inspiration in everything I do … to follow my passion, allowing natural exuberance to help choose where I give my time & talents … to remember that my body is simply a vessel.  When I allow the divine current to flow through me, I stay renewed & ready for whatever comes.

There are abundant opportunities to give, and many of them are right next door. I love that so many are called to help the people of Haiti, but I’d really prefer us to find ways to build infrastructures that will allow that support to be more ongoing.  Natural disasters will continue to happen, and there will likely always be people around the need extra support.  In the end, that’s probably why we’re here: to learn to give what we have to give, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to open to receive the giving & the loving so that it expands.  Perhaps what we’re being asked to build together NOW is an expansive Arc of Love that will move us into a new phase of humanity.

Tags: activation, inspired service, sacred activism, we are the ones

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one …
I am of the opinion that my life belongs
to the whole community and as long as I live it
is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die,
for the harder I work, the more I live.
I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me.
It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment,
and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible
before handing it on to future generations.”
~George Bernard Shaw

Amen. This is one of my very favorite quotes, even though I sometimes feel unworthy when I read it, like I haven’t quite got the torch burning brightly enough. Still, it brings tears of recognition, and I know that I am doing what I can with the moments I have. More often now, I recognize that the brightest burning comes from the stringing of moments, one bright bead of time after another, so that they all come together to create this splendid torch I call my life.

Consider how you are stringing your beads of time, and whether your torch is glowing as brightly as you’d like. So many of our moments are simply lost to the inevitable ‘to do’ list or in emotional response to past stories or future inventions. When we live fully alive to the gift of the moment (the ‘present’ ;-), we are creating a worthy torch to pass on to future generations.

It’s easy to be consumed by the negativity that surrounds us in the media and sometimes in our daily circumstances. It takes great compassion to live in a world where many are still homeless and hungry, while others live with more than we really need. In at least one way, those with excess have the bigger challenge: how do we choose where to focus our resources when the needs seem so much larger than any one person can fill?

Have you ever noticed how the very heart of compassion, the simple caring for others, is PASSION. It takes extreme passion to live in this world for the good of the whole, and to show up day after day after day doing what is needed to care for the less glamorous parts of our world.

It’s humbling to see the work that is already being done all around the world … people joining together to build bridges of hope, sustainability, and transformation. So many acts of simple giving become life-evolving, and we each hold the key to unlock a prison door for someone less fortunate than ourselves.

Andrew Harvey, sacred activist extraordinaire, guides us to follow our heartbreak…to choose one thing that hurts most and find a way to give to that. It doesn’t need to be a life-altering giving, although most of us know that when we give to that which is breaking our hearts, our lives are always changed. And this is a good thing.

Last month, I wrote about co-creative alchemy, and today I feel more passionate than ever before about the need for us to ACT TOGETHER in co-creation. This is a time of great change, and as visionary-futurist Barbara Marx-Hubbard so elegantly tells us, “collapse is an inevitable seed within the natural process of evolution.” We are the imaginal cels that are birthing a new way of being, and this is a powerful choice point for how we are to Serve this awakening society. (If you want the full juicy story about ‘imaginal cels’ watch Barbara’s enlightening video, ‘Humanity Ascending’.)

So … what is your heartbreak?  Where is your passion? What bright or subtle burning will light your torch even more brightly?

And how might we come together to create a truly Splendid Torch to pass along to the next generation?

I celebrate the Light within each of you.
~Shining Sor’a

Tags: activation, Add new tag, awakening, enlightenment, inspired service, sacred activism

“What are you going to do with your one wild and magnificent life?”

I’ll just launch right in and say it: the world needs our magnificence more than ever right now. It may not be easy to SHINE in these days of depressing news and impending doom, but it’s more important than ever to pull out all the stops and remember who we really are. And we are talented, intelligent, brilliant wo(men) who have an array of gifts to give and solutions to offer.

We really ARE the ones we’ve been waiting for, and it’s time to give ourselves completely to this ‘one wild and magnificent life’… it’s time to truly SHINE.

If you don’t know how to do this, ask yourself a few simple questions: What brings me joy? Where do I find sustenance? Which of my talents come most easy and naturally? How might I share more of these natural gifts with the world?

When you enter a dark room, all you need to do is flip the switch and the darkness disappears. What if WE are the switches bringing light to the dark areas of life? Perhaps if we each click ON and give of our radiance in a hundred simple ways each day (rather than being dulled to sleep by the negative news), the world will become ablaze with solutions rather than burned out by problems.

It’s time for boldness of being and doing. Difficult times call for asleep people to wake up, and for awake people to take action. As someone who’s passionate about creativity and always looking for the silver linings, I know some of the most innovative solutions come during hardship. So let us create!

Take a look around you. Where can you bring a little more light to someone’s day? How might you help a friend shine more brightly? What simple, significant things might you do with your one wild and magnificent life?

Find something to believe in, and turn UP the light. Let yourself shine.

~Sor’a

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Tags: awakening, collective giving, empowerment, ending world poverty, enlightenment, Humanity Unites Brilliance, inspired service, personal and business training, sacred teleCircle, we are the ones