Mayne Island Retreat and Mount Park

This past weekend I went over to my property on Mayne Island.  I have a little trailer there and this is where I plan to build my cob house this summer.

The power to my trailer currently comes from an extension cord attached to my power pole and I am so grateful to have it as I can heat my place and plug in a small fridge that sits on the deck outside my door.

I love it here, the big deck fills with sunshine and I can sit out there and have my breakfast overlooking the trees.

On Sunday there was a book launch for three women from the Gulf Islands. I thought is was at four, but when I turned up at the Community Centre no one was around. I checked out the poster, it was 4:30.

Time to kill.  So I took this gift of time and drove up the little street that led to Mount Park.  I had never been to this particular part of the island.  What a beautiful treasure it is.

A short way up the trail there is a pond. :-)

Roots carpet the earth as you travel up the trail. Step up ahead are so inviting.

Thank you Mary for your generous gift. You brought peace and light to my afternoon.

It was almost like being at home in Maple Ridge, but there is a drier feel to things here.
I only got to walk part of the trail as I had to get back for the book launch, but I will be back next time I am on Mayne Island.
The book launch is another story.

First Morning on the Patio

The sun was shining Friday morning and it was warm enough for me to have breakfast outside on the patio. During the week  I had bought some new flowers and it was lovely to gaze at them while I was drinking my tea

Thursday  I had a meeting with my supervisor about my thesis proposal for my Masters and I plan to make the necessary changes and have it finished.

I'm going over to Mayne Island for the weekend and can't wait to see the changes to my site.  A couple of  trees have being cut down and a space is been cleared for my friend Lou to build a shed for the wood. He is going to mill the wood from the trees on my property and we will place it in the shed for drying.  It is great that we plan to use the trees that I had to have cut down to clear the site in the building as flooring upstairs, studs for the upstairs and for the beams and rafters. 

Earth Day at the Farmer's Market

This morning I awoke to sunshine and began my day researching other blogs out there and found so many helpful sites, where others selflessly help others to create and write. From Zen Habits I found Mary Jaksch and her blog, Goodlife Zen,  and her wonderful blog which in turn linked me to her site Write To Done, where they are passionate about helping writers get confident and write better.  There is even a free ebook, The (nearly)Ultimate Guide to Better Writing for you to download if you wish.

This was such an exciting start to my day. After my breakfast during which I was filled with gratitude for the trees breaking into leaf outside my window, my lovely friend Ruona called me and invited me to go to the opening day of the Farmer's Market here in beautiful Maple Ridge.

When we arrived it was a bustling, happy place to be. So many wonderful vendors sharing fresh produce, and crafts and community organizations displaying their ideas for all to see. 

This little boy was intrigued by the red wriggler worms used to make a worm composting box. I used to have these in my Magic Puddle Preschool many years ago.  Children just love seeing these living creatures in the dark soil.

Inside the magical worm composting box.

I had just watched the documentary No Impact Man last week and he had incorporated a worm composting box into his New York apartment.  Life is so full of timely coincidences.

We walked on and bumped into my friend Loretta, who I am currently doing my MEd with at SFU.  She loves bees and is working with Hives for Humanity to spread the beauty and power of bees. Not only to they give us honey, but they help heal humans.  The CEED Centre have recently added bees to their Community Garden and it is exciting to see the work Loretta is doing in our community.  She has created some bee puppets and was presenting a puppet show today. The marionettes made of natural fabric and wool are once again of my Waldorf based preschool and the toys we had there for the children to play with. 

See the black and yellow bee puppet hided by the moss. Love the marionettes too, so soft and gentle.

Bees and the flowers they love. Plant flowers and feed the bees.

Once again we moved on. It is such a joy to be at our Farmer's Market and you can't walk ten steps without bumping into an old friend.  Music was everywhere you turned and children were dancing and performing in little enclaves where performances were occurring. A true wealth of community and the sense of belonging that it brings to all who are there.

We stopped to watch local artist Jack, as he painted the mountains we love so much.


In the distance I heard to drumming and was drawn to the sound.  Sure enough it was a good friend, Pamela Danz,  playing with another mutual friend. Great sounds and it got us dancing.

What an amazing morning. I also gathered a  huge amount of information I hope to use for my cob house project. Booths on solar energy and saving rainwater to set up irrigation systems in your garden etc were so helpful to me as I get nearer to building my natural home.

I hope to post information about these discoveries on my Pams Cob House blog another day.
Right now I am heading into Vancouver to see my daughter and get some planters and plants to build a patio garden for her deck.

Thank you for such a blessed and beautiful day, and it is only 1:30. :-)

Moving on with a new title, My Beautiful Life.

Someone recently suggested that I should do some inspirational writing. I immediately sensed resistance to this idea. Very interesting.
I started this blog just to do that. It was a couple of years ago and I have found it quite a challenge to blog here on a regular basis.
Where is the source of my resistance.
My life is amazingly rich and blessed.  I journal daily and over the past year I have been introduced to kirtan chanting which has been such a gift in my life. I also started a Transformational Leadership Certification course online. Things are going just great.
I sing songs I have written for others and easily speak before others as I do presentations and workshops.
So I ask myself, Why do I have this difficulty about writing in order to share my learnings and life experiences with others?

The past two weeks have been a real lesson to me as messages supporting my doing this kind of work have been absolutely pouring into my life from all directions. Synchronicity is so magical.

It makes me feel quite foolish as my blocks seem so insignificant now as I look back.
I look forward to sharing some of the messages and teachings I have received over the past weeks.
I know I am excited.
I have a new name for my blog now, MyBeautifulLife.ca and I just have to talk to godaddy to get the url set up to connect here. For now it is pamsbeautifullife.blogspot and that is just fine.

What I visualize is a home for all my activities, all the many facets of my beautiful life :-)
I can have pages and links to my music and my cob house plans. Also I can post my art and teaching experiences here as well.
So, it is exciting to be here and not to feel so hesitant about my writing.

I have just finished a Writing course at SFU, the last course of my Masters of Arts in Education. I am on to my thesis now, :-) More about that in the future.
 Our amazing writing professor invited the whole class down to her cabin in the States, it was such a great drive down the beautiful Chuckanut. We had sunshine and a day filled with presentations, fire building, gardening projects and lots of good food, conversation and laughter.
I thought I would share a picture of her cute cabin for you to see. She has three acres under the cedars and has put in gorgeous gardens.

Affirmation To Expand Your Expectations

Here is an affirmation I love.
 "By expanding my horizons, I dissolve old limitations."
I write it often in my journal. It really opens one up to a broader vision.

Thanksgiving Weekend

I am so grateful for all the time to meditate, journal and read my cards. I have a wonderful new set of cards I got at Reflections in Coquitlam.  They are the Enchanted Map Oracle Cards and they are very beautiful and have wonderful wisdom.

 

I also picked up my old journal with my affirmations written down and read this one. It is one I used often a few years ago and is very fitting still.

"I love humanity by letting it be whatever it wants to be. 

I love myself by becoming that which I wish to be."

 Stuart Wild.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Making Things Better, Scripting Life.

Weekends are such a blessing, my time for reflection and recharging.
This morning I picked up my book, Manifest Your Desires by Esther and Jerry Hicks and began reading. How inspiring, they talk about the 'scripting process' and this is how it works.
 You pretend that you are a writer and that everything you write will be performed exactly how you write it. Your only job is to WRITE IT. You must describe it in detail, everything exactly as how you would want it to be.
This process helps you get specific, to include detail and thus bring greater clarity to help you understand what you do desire. The longer you focus on something, the more detail you give it and the faster the energy moves. This is so true. You get to a point where you actually feel the momentum of your desire and the Universal Energy pushing things along. You can literally feel when you are on the brink of breaking through, as the dream begin manifesting. Every time magic happens we are surprised. But we know it works and I often wonder why we are surprised. I think it is because many of us were raised to expect to struggle and to not be supported or have the expectation to get what we dream of.
I  am so happy right now. So happy to have the wonderful books available for my snuggly mornings when I can read and journal and dream. To have the time to spend on my dreams and my study of all the wonderful resources out there to help us understand our life here on earth.
I am also blessed to have such a loving family and so many great friends.
So I will take some time this morning to do some 'scripting'.  Manifest Your Desires states that "If you regurgitate your script long enough you begin to accept it as reality; and when you are accepting it in the way you accept reality, the Universe believes it and responds in the same way." I love it.
I first discovered Esther and Jerry by word of mouth from my friend Peggy, who went on a cruise with then to hear the teachings of Abraham. Since then I have watched videos with the inspiring words of Abraham spoken alongside wonderful images. It is all so joyful and positive.
I share these videos as favourites on my youtube channel as I find them so uplifting. My favourite quote is the one about 'going downstream' as that is where you end up anyway. We so often insist on trying to paddle against the current instead of going with the flow.
So here is Esther talking about paddling upstream and how fruitless it is.
Why do we seek to make things 'hard work'. She explains how not going with the flow takes away a joy. You feel wonderful when you dream.

Everyday I try to stop and breathe and remind myself that 'everything happens in Divine right order.'