Summer

Every season has a wisdom to teach us. What is summer’s wisdom? The most of us seek a cooler pause with a deep longing for a more peaceful and often playful abandonment during the longer days. Summer “planting” to most connotes greater freedom, picnic days, a time of some vacation discovery, basking in the healing warmth of a cozier sunshine, and greater detachment from the whirl of things, and with a more lighthearted and relaxed connection. Summer has more light.

Let’s recall that planting needs care. A cooling, welcoming forest or a peaceful garden thrives on a number of elements harmoniously working together. When I look out into the garden and I look up at the summer trees, I appreciate that something about it had to let go of something to make way for fuller leaves. In between that time, everything about it had to hibernate and rest. Nature had to reflect on how it would harness the maximum potential of its underlying energies to spring new summer leaves, new beauty, new hope, new happiness for others. How are we like a majestic summer tree or a sweet summer flower?

June

A summer tree takes deep breaths. She pauses more. She unfurls her leaves as she exhales. She stands rooted and grounded in its collective experience of a growing strength. Her blossoming speaks with color upon rainbows of rebirth. Summer’s harvest rekindles our deep love for more ease in our day.

Summer often tries to reconnect us to our possibility and our youthful resilience. Her season is all about rest and presence, and planting well in that way while going with the flow. Maybe her lightness of being is there because she has long shed her winter coat of heaviness. Maybe her dreams are about snows and spring rain that have melted and dissolved into rich, brown earth.  Everything about her “order” feels more relaxed to our skin and “playfully neat”.

As we breathe in summer, we see and sense a subliminal power to her enchanting offerings. We are bathed in the joys of a delightful garden, or the serenity of a sweet lake, or the play of a lapping ocean. Our hearts understand that summer’s evolution to such a resplendent, playful arrival could logically only happen upon a foundational agreement of letting go. During summer, we even observe that a caterpillar had to destroy and transform something of itself and cocoon for a summer period to birth into a beautiful butterfly. Nothing grows without this cycle in place. Not even the summer flower sprouting from the love of a spring seed. How is something within each of us like the hope of a butterfly? How are we like the bird visiting us a summer day or a new summer puppy of playful abundance and joy? The “lighter” days inspire us to release the past and our familiar way of doing things. Summer encourages that we affirm new hope, savor special relationships, and open ourselves to different perspectives.  A simple shift in mindset changes so much.

July

Indeed, throughout summer, and all across Nature, something must revitalize for a new beauty to make way for some new life. Summer can only achieve and arrive to such space by letting go of what it no longer needs. The same revitalizing joy happens when we look at our own internal operating systems. When we begin to declutter the mind and heart, the rooms we keep in our internal house also become “lighter” in being. We become more assiduous to harmonize a personal and perpetual garden within ourselves. We also create more space for serenity. Just like a summer gardener, we cultivate a heart open for more pockets of joy.

When we let go of things and release agitation, we also create an empty space for life to fill us with a new abundance. The gift in such committed exercise is great. Over time, we sense a halo of inner peace no matter life’s travails. Happiness is not elusive, and so much more kindness is found. When we spring clean over a summer season internally, too, we understand that to let go is to agree to move past our fears of how we used to do things.

Okay, sure, sometimes that emptiness or freed space can be terrifying, even bewildering. It can be unsettling at the most basic external level, as in giving away something you’ve outgrown. It can be highly uncomfortable choosing to challenge one’s perspective and way of doing things. It takes courage to move beyond one’s comfort zone. This is true for all of us in anything and everything. Yet, we tend to sit more closely in a pocket of understanding and be true to our own self-assured love when we go for such commitment. As we trust that empty terrain, and so long as we strive to live with peaceful order, we see the space fill with an opportune abundance, and sometimes in ways we could not even imagine. When we search for harmony through things, we also touch more unspoken kindness and many more softer joys.

This is why relying on any mechanism of insecurity that we use to feel in control and protectively deserving keeps us unconscious. We then as much separate ourselves from being alert to a more conscious appraisal of kind outcome to ourselves and to others. Yet, slowly and gently ridding all our “reflexive unloving habit” gets us closer to the frequency we crave, and more alert to any attitude within ourselves that pollutes or negates it. We are then stepping out of auto-pilot and our habituated scripts, and we are agreeing to be more attuned to an open heart. As we rid unhelpful habit, we in fact are returning our hearts and empowering our hearts to our most authentic self. This “birth cycle” optimizes our happiness and it optimizes our health.

Sure, sometimes it’s frustrating when we clean and let go. Sometimes the heat and intensity of clearing space gets scary and darn hard. It is also not always easy to figure out how things can be organized or fit, and sometimes we can’t let go of everything just then and there; but when we  accept the activity of the work, we actually start to learn to affirm it. Why? Because we are making room for new and wonderful things to enter our lives.

August

How do we want to flourish for ourselves? That is summer’s question. How will we replenish for a happiness and bring our frequency of that aspired happiness to others across our year? Flourishing your heartspeak is often a conscious act. So how to begin or better consolidate a perpetual harvest within?

Let us look at some strategies.

1. Keep calm and cool. Summer is about going with the flow. Summer doesn’t understand spin. Or washing machines. If you notice, summer can’t hold on to any kind of energetic spin or excessive heat for too long. It has to let the container go. Learn to redirect yourself when you are ruminating, and try to become more playful and gentle about it. Can you move with the flow and follow the summer ride you are on like a sailor trusting your sail in the wind?
2. It is always kinder to identify the source of your spin after a good pause of mindful light-hearted activity. Your heart will be more open and your brain will be calmer and more efficient to spot what you need to declutter. Usually your source of spin will have a simple theme.
3. Summer days do not understand the language of a should have. Its language is present and grateful. So yes, catch your internal should haves and could haves, and do your work to stay present. Strive to lower your self-criticism or any harsh disapprovals; and if you are anxious to things, be it on the inside or out, give yourself love and stick to a kind compassion instead.
4. Get your brain game to be thankful and your heart to be humble. Gratitude is an effective practice in resilience. The gratitude and appreciation you bring out for what is will inevitably outshine that “spin”. Gratitude is calming and it will also helpfully detach your brain from any false praise or any forced positivity, too.
5. And most of all, stay connected to the power of your breath. Breath grounds you. Breath also connects you to mystery. Make it a year round game that whatever doesn’t align with a confidently calm and humble standard is an operating thought you are best to rid. Whenever you are in disorder, gently call yourself to come back to the beautiful power of your living breath.

September

So yes, it is wise to practice at least one of these strategies of a daily mindfulness in a loving and kind way. And yes, do take restful pauses, and do embrace summer’s invitation to rest and to meditate as best you can. The way you choose to rest or mindfully contemplate doesn’t at all have to be big.

It can be that you…

Take a walk outside or in your imagination…

and as you walk that path – maybe it’s along the beach, or through a mountain, a delightful garden, a magical forest, or a sandy island — notice how each breath clears your mind. Enjoy where that path is taking you.

As you look at the beautiful flowers, and enjoy the lush trees and unexpected wild notes of freedom on your walk, imaginary or real, observe and remember that you and the bird and the honey bee, as well as your companion dog of the heart, are all enjoying and seeing the same scene perfectly, and yet differently. Smile to this observation and invite your own heart to be broader with your perspective, and even playful with it. Thank the beauty and simple joy you are witnessing.

Thank the energy of harmony filling you as you agree to see beauty beyond difficult emotion, uncomfortable obstacle, and in the face of your own vulnerabilities. Give thanks to a walk that helps you know that your true foundation is love and appreciation and joy.

Take five more deep breaths. As you inhale, imagine sunshine crowning through the top of your head. Imagine and feel all that resourceful and informative good filtering the whole of your body and hugging your skin. As you exhale, feel the breath root your spine. Imagine all that you don’t need flowing down your legs and leaving out through the soles of your feet and down into the ground.

Welcome the earth supporting you, and thank her for transforming and recycling what you let go
into something more loving and beautiful again.

Give gratitude to this simple exchange of a harmonious good
and thank the mystery of your own breath.

I wish us all love in the journey.

Photography by Marina Mashaal

Dearest Heartspeak Reader,
It is my birthday month and I share with you a wish.
If you would like to experience a free distal healing session of thirty minutes,
please contact me by email at marina@myheartspeak.ca to book a time.
Many share that it is a beautiful and helpful experience.
I would be delighted to extend my heart to you in this way.