Aligning with Love

"Love is extolled by poets, tawdry and brilliant alike. For songwriters it’s a near ubiquitous theme. Scarcely a bestselling book or film lacks a love interest. Mystics avow that ‘God is Love.’ The Beatles sing ‘All you need is love.’ No doubt about it, love is a biggie."

Thus begins the essay in BECOMING called Aligning with Love. But what does love even mean? How do we love? What about love and Love? These questions have beleaguered me, and there have been times when it has seemed as though I don't know love, or how to love. The essay continues:

"Sometimes it has felt as though there is a yawning hole where my heart should be, a hard knot in my chest, closed and defended. I have been alarmed at times, and saddened, at the occasions and ways I am shut down, numbed out and deadened, like a proverbial zombie. "

Part of the confounding is that love has so many meanings, and is so hyped in our culture, if not lived. As I delved into my experience, it became clear that the love I wanted to know--explore, live, embody--was not romantic love, parental love, or the love of friend or even devotees. I'd call these forms of love, love writ with a small 'l'. They are important, beautiful, and have their place, in our hearts and the evolution of our species.

But there is a kind of Love that is deeper, beyond the personal, though it can manifest in a personal way. It's mysterious, universal, inside us but not only...poets like Rumi write about it,
mystics breathe it...spiritual traditions point to it...

Hear Teilhard de Chardin: "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides , and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire." Chardin is speaking of Love with a capital 'L'. What is this Love? How do we know it, be it, do it? Or can we? What happens when we live it, succumb to it, are enveloped by it?

Through a mutual friend, Suzanne Barois, (integrally involved with transformation and human potential through the Be the Change Earth Alliance), I have serendipitously come to connect with Anne Hillman. Her work speaks to these questions in a profound and universal way.

Anne was inspired, deeply and early on, by this quote of Chardin's, and her recent book Awakening to the Energies of Love: Discovering Fire for the Second Time, is a rich, thoughtful treatise on these energies and their capacity for transformation.

Awakening provides a context for the big questions, and moves us toward understanding, resolution, and a new level of consciousness and capacity for love. And it's high time! Anne says "We stand at an evolutionary juncture, called to awaken to a new kind of Love. This Love is not a feeling; it is a great power...The power of Love initiates a complete change of mind--the fundamental transformation..." that when we awaken to it, is indeed akin to the discovery of fire.

I invite you to hear the call, to explore the depths, to listen to the whisper that there is something deeper, grander, fuller in us, and we in it, than we experience in our daily lives. It's truly an Invitation to Awakening, which is the title of the first chapter in Anne's book, and the book itself.

Helen Keller wisely counsels that "the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."

If touching on these topics has ignited the fire in your heart, you might want to consider these

Questions for Relection: What is your relationship to Love, to the energy, to the flow, the power of it? Name some ways that you touch into Love in your life. What is your experience of yourself when you are loving? What assumptions and beliefs do you have about love and Love? How do they limit or expand your capacity to align with Love?


You may purchase BECOMING on line, or ask your local bookstore to order it. BECOMING can be a valuable therapeutic tool as well. Read a therapist's perspective on its numerous benefits. Another idea: the collections of essays makes a good option for your book or study group!

Gardens, Gifts, and Butterflies

"There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again." Elizabeth Lawrence

It's spring at last, on the calendar, but also in our hearts and in the air, as well as in our gardens -- a time of rejuvenation, birth, transformation, growth and change. Gardens all over are bursting with vibrant life!

Fitting for the season, I offer you an excerpt from an essay in BECOMING called Gardens and Gifts:

"There are many kinds of gardens in our lives, not just the ones that grow flowers or vegetables. One could think of a circle of friends as a kind of garden, the arrangement of our cupboards, the plates and herbs we choose, the range of jobs we’ve held…

The life of an octogenarian Austrian great-grandma I know comprised several kinds of gardens. Recalling Oma’s variety of gardens has helped me reflect on mine. I have found the metaphor of 'Life itself as a Garden' to be fruitful (pun intended) and munificent.

Oma has a vital and robust will to live, even under her present challenging circumstances. She is in her nineties now, frail, confused, wizened, but her face can shine like a fading flower’s last bloom as, with her sense of humor and unrelenting determination, she decides anew to make the best of the situation.

Oma ... has modeled for me in a way that made a lasting impression—how to cultivate the beautiful and useful, savor the honey and honeysuckle along the way, and not to pay unnecessary attention to the weeds or irritations, only deal with them if they’re choking other growing things.

We’re always planting seeds, whether we are aware of it or not. We never know when we may have planted a seed that will bear fruit some time, some place. It’s also probable, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, that we reap what we sow. 'Life as a garden' is alive, and can enchant, instruct, and nourish ourselves and others."

If you find the metaphor useful, here are some questions for reflection: How does your garden grow? What sorts of seeds do you believe you are planting? If the fruit they bear are not exactly what you intended, what seeds would you like to plant and how could you nurture them? What are some ‘weeds’ in your garden and how do you relate to them? What are some aspects of your ‘garden’ that you particularly treasure and why?

As we go about tending the various gardens in our lives, or the garden of our life, let us also pay attention to the butterflies! Elisabet Sahtouris, an evolution biologist and futurist, offers this: "An old unsustainable system fights to preserve itself as a new system struggles to be born... There is no point in being angry with it and there is n need to worry about defeating it. The task is to focus on building the butterfly, the success of which depends on powerful positive and creative efforts in all aspects of society and alliances build among those engaged in them."

Let's tend our gardens and build more butterflies this spring!

You may purchase BECOMING on line, or ask your local bookstore to order it. It can be a valuable therapeutic tool as well. Read a therapist's perspective on its value. And another idea: the collections of essays makes a good option for your book or study group :-)

Reader's comment

Dear friends, spiritual adventurers, fellow travelers on life's journey,

Here is the most recent reader's review of BECOMING. I hope it might pique your interest in delving into the volume!

"Quite wonderful, really. Your style is easy, engaging, alluring. Your language is clean and precise, your form masterfully simple.

It's not easy to use the first person, especially regarding spirituality, without distracting or annoying the reader with traces of ego or pedantry. Your reader is invited to share the journey, and willingly does so, sensing both the truth of the path, and the unconditional invitation. You present yourself as a seeker rather than a master, thus welcoming and disarming other potentially hesitant seekers, and encouraging them by admitting your all-too-frail humanity. All of which is underscored with a deep abiding wisdom. Even famous spiritual leaders may have their writings rejected by publishers; your success with this book is both well-deserved, and all the more outstanding.

As you touch others, as their eyes open, more light spills out, making your own path both more blessed, and all the more easy to follow."

Apropos of touching others, and light spilling out -- you might also like to check out Carla Rieger's blog and Christina Baldwin's Storycatcher. Both authors offer richness, inspiration, and address the possibilities of the transformation through story and circle. You are a story worth telling!

Blessings on you and your journey.

BECOMING is now available on line at Amazon in the US , Canada, and in the UK. Barnes and Nobel carries BECOMING as well.

Where We Want To Go -- We are already there!

"The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think." John Burroughs

"If we are not totally blind, that which we are seeking is already here. This is it." Alan Watts

One essay in BECOMING is entitled 'Look Where You Want to Go.' It addresses our tendency to focus on what we don't want. We don't accept what is and stay present with the challenging situation or experience -- No. We rarely do that! Rather we get stuck in our thinking mind and we obsess about the difficulty: we ruminate, brood, wallow, criticize ourselves...

This is not the only way! We can drop into our Being, become aware of what is, breathe consciously, notice what is, create space, and bring a whole different person to the challenge.

Check out the section on 'Breathing Space,' in the book, Mindful Way Through Depression, which, by the way, is not just about depression, but about 'freeing yourself from chronic unhappiness.' Jon Kabat-Zinn and others teach a practical and transformational path that leads in this direction.

BECOMING addresses these themes as well, in a personal yet universal manner. BECOMING is now available on line, at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble , and in the UK Check it out and tell your friends!

Passion, Risk, and Adventure

Themes addressed in Becoming include transformation, reinventing ourselves, control and surrender.

Sara Lawrence Lightfoot talks about these topics as well in her new book THE THIRD CHAPTER: PASSION, RISK, AND ADVENTURE IN THE 25 YEARS AFTER 50.

"All of us at this point, to some degree, are on a search for meaningfulness, for purposefulness," she says. Listen to Lightfoot's interview with Bill Moyers and be inspired to become yourself. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05082009/profile2.html

There comes a time, and that time is now, when we have a degree of freedom to become who we have always wanted to be.

Becoming: Journey Toward Authenticity is an aid to finding ourselves, recognizing, seeing, freeing, and moving on. Explore these and other themes, purchase Becoming, on our new website.

"The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look underfoot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think." John Burroughs

How many of us took a moment today to 'look underfoot' for the divine? Was it a smile, a flower, a deep breath? BECOMING: Journeying Toward Authenticity is an invitation to the possibilities and opportunities for transformation, how to use our life stories to grow, to become, to live our lives more fully.

Breaking news:

• BECOMING is now available at Banyen Books in Vancouver, a leading new age bookstore. Go in and check it out!

• BECOMING will soon be available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and in the UK. Stay tuned!

"If we are not totally blind, that which we are seeking is already here. This is it." Alan Watts

Warmhearted praise.. add your voice? That would be lovely!

"We're all in this together -- by ourselves.:  Lily Tomlin

People reading my new book, Becoming, are warm in their enthusiasm and praise, which leads me to have the courage to spread the word.  I think you would enjoy the read.   I invite you to check it out!

Becoming is available at Duthie Books   http://www.duthiebooks.com/  2239 West Fourth Avenue, Vancouver.  

And also on line at The Write Room, easy as pie. 

You may also contact me directly to arrange a meeting and have a look at the book.  I'd love that :-)   A portion of all proceeds goes to the Canadian organization, Families for Children -- http://www.familiesforchildren.ca/

Need a gift for a friend? Becoming might be perfect.  Have a look.

Introducing Becoming

The book I have been working on for the past couple of years (it's my first), is fresh back from the printer! It's called Becoming: Journeying toward Authenticity and creating it has been a rich and rewarding project. It is published by a new, independent, Vancouver publisher: The Write Room Press.

I invite you to have a look at the book and read some reviews by going to http://www.thewriteroom.net/newtitles.html voila! It can be ordered there as well. Or you can contact me directly jill.schroder AT gmail.com (substitute @ for " AT "). A portion of the proceeds will go to Families For Children a fine non-profit, non-sectarian organization helping the poorest of women and children.

The book itself is a set of personal essays, which, as one reviewer has said, "... glean nuggets from many teachings and makes them personally accessible. This is benefit enough to recommend it. More than this, though, it invites us into our own experiences. And after all, it is here – in the intimacy of our own experience – that these stories come true and unfold. These stories are doorways, opening us to our own journeys. This is a book to read over and over."

Each essay begins with two provocative quotations which set the tone, and concludes with references to related reading to deepen the exploration of the theme. As well, each essay offers a set of questions which invite the reader to reflect on her/his own life in the areas addressed in that essay.

The essays themselves, and the questions that follow, are intended to be a stepping stone for the reader's own personal reflection and self-discovery. Becoming is an invitation for each of us to delve into our own lives and stories, to reflect and share, broaden and deepen. Essentially the essays are about exploring key moments in our lives, the possibilities for personal transformation, and for being here -- now -- in an authentic way.

The section headings are

Why me? Why now? What about you?
Growing Up
Metaphors and Worldviews
People and Places
Purpose and Meaning
Shadows and Ambiguities
Control and Surrender

Perhaps this piques your interest :-)

In future posts, you'll find material on some of the book's themes, as well as links to related topics. This will get us started:

Authenticity is a rich topic. What does it actually mean, Authenticity? One definition suggests that authenticity is "a particular way of dealing with the external world, being faithful to internal rather than external ideas." This is in sync with the tone of the book but barely begins to scratch the surface. What does authenticity mean to you?

One of the essays in Becoming is called "Work and/or Play." Check out this TED talk by Stuart Brown on "Why Play Is Vital," which relates directly to the essay. Get ready to smile!

Welcome to the Becoming blog. I hope we enjoy a fruitful connection. Please post a comment and give me your feedback and ideas.