A Peaceful Morning of "Deer Theatre"

We have just finished watching our more or less regularly scheduled episode of “Deer Theatre” this morning.

For about twenty to thirty minutes between approximately 8:30 and 9:00 AM, a few deer come out of the surrounding forest and feed around the edges of the meadow.

We stop everything and watch them graze.

Today, there was some interest in the wildflowers, which are about three feet high.

The, grazing around the north end of the meadow brought the deer within fifty feet of our cabin.

There was some foraging into the woods north of that, and then more activity in the northeast corner, and along the eastern part where the deer mineral block is.

The deer were still visibly active when my husband left the cabin to fill the teapot, but we heart the harsh cough that we have learned is the warning from the invisible buck.

Apparently, the return to the cabin, moving toward the direction of the deer was not OK, and so they bounded, with their usual incredible grace, back into the woods.

We started heating our tea, “Deer Theatre” being over for the morning, and eased into our reading and study, respectively.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Provision of Peace

The perfect peace of an early morning, sunlit drops of dew on meadow grass.

A young raccoon makes his way across it, pausing as it searches for food.

the perfect balance of Nature all around me.

Trees shielding the rising sun until it peeks, then bursts over the ridge.

Birdsong changes as the light envelops us all.

A perfect rhythm unfolding of the day, and me in it, too.

I have been canning and cooking food, some of which we will pack for a camping tour.

Our increasingly tidy arrangements in the 12’ x 20’ cabin where we live, makes it easy to pack.

We have discarded most of our belongings in our desire to move into peaceful surroundings.

Mostly all we have retained is materials for our wealth of projects.

There is relief and then the peace flooding in.

We know we now have unrestricted room to express all our bulid up desires.  

This lets us serve in the way we are each designed.

It is a glorious day in our new paradise of peace, part of the Beneficent Universe’s provision for us.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Peace in My New Path

My new path is unlimited in its purpose and resources.

It comes from within.

It reaches out to those who may be most benefitted by this discovery.

Our support of one another comes from our spiritual nature.

We never run out of resources to express that which is within.

We build our community by attracting those we can best serve.

The more we serve in little ways, the more opportunities we attract to serve in larger ways.

By improving our ability to serve right where we are, we appreciate our immediate resources.

We draw more as we express more.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Cultivate Tenderness

In planning my music teaching materials, I have cultivated respect and value for original ideas from the very beginning.

I am now including the idea of cultivating tenderness.

By getting away from the pressure of our hurried lives, we can slow down for intimate and tender moments with our children.

The fear culture around us distracts us from the ability to build an inner practice with our family.

Instead of inviting the noise and pain of the outside culture into our homes through the media and technology we can make our homes a sacred sanctuary.

We can build routines of cooking dinner together, conversation at the table, and community as we clean up.

In my music materials, I include a transitional technique (I post a grown-up version at www.takethreedeepbreaths.blogspot.com) to set the stage for musical learning. 

By spending ten minutes a day of undistracted time with your child, you are cultivating tenderness.

You attention is not pressured, not divided.

You tenderly attend to your child’s learning needs, step by step.  You can expand this to other time you spend with your child.

As you expand your tenderness practices from one routine activity to another, and then another, your household will take on an entirely different character.

You may find yourself cultivating tenderness in your own routines, and preparing thoughtfully instead of in a rush.

You can cultivate tenderness from the inside and let it expand into all your activities.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPratices.com

Peace With Who I Really Am

Having obediently and creatively followed the profession which I was trained in, I am now ready to do the thing which truly feels wonderful to me.

I find that I am not fighting the gap between who I am and who I want to be.

I struggled with the difference until I realized that it is my right to choose my own direction.

Then I began taking the steps to get myself here.

It took four years of pulling away from the old profession and learning the new one.

I took workshops, got certifications, and gained as much as experience as I could.

I learned from books and Youtube.

And now, I am in a new place, doing the things I have been learning.

When I started working in my new studio, I couldn’t even slow down.

It felt so wonderful.

I love being who I am.

It has been worth all the work to change direction.

My identity and my action are aligned.

There is no struggle.

There is such a joyous flow.

I am deeply at peace with who I am.

I just love it.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Everyone Can Be As Happy As I Am

Although I started out happy, many problems piled up and I had to find my way to happy again.

As I realized my life was not turning out the way i had thought it would, I began a rigorous and desperate search.

The idea of “GIVE MORE” came to me repeatedly.

I searched and studied to discover my purpose and also to figure out the message of “GIVE MORE”.

As the answers came, I found I didn’t value them.

But the same answers kept coming, so I decided to listen to them, and to finally take action.

That action has continued to build until finally, after several years, I have a body of work to release.

And I love it.

I love the work that I have been led to do.

I love its purpose.

I love its power.

I love the feeling that I am involved in “right livelihood”.

As I have valued the answers that came (and still come) to me and acted on them, they have placed me in ideal, beautiful surroundings.

I look forward to releasing more and more as I love and value myself and my ideas.

I have become very happy with who I am and what I do.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Gently Led

Harsh experiences of relationships and places breaking up are sometimes the ways we are gently led to peace.

Desperately clinging to the wreck is one of the indicators we receive to tell us we must move on.

After analyzing and dissecting how and why things went wrong, being amazed at their consistency and having no way to change, redirect, or correct, I finally got off that cycle to nowhere.

Using some of my new vocabulary of going “within”, I discovered I could hear a different direction.

I was forced, i.e., gently led, to keep listening and taking the steps in my new direction.

This direction is so completely different from anything I have ever heard of or experienced and so completely fulfilling in a different way, that resolving any of my previous conflicts would have provided nothing in the way of getting here.

I can see now that I was being given a gift of supreme discomfort and frustration and unfairness.

I am now in an entirely different Universe of connection, fulfillment and prosperity.

© 2014 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com