Last Saturday a group of women came together for the second Soul Sisters Retreat in beautiful Cable Bay, near Nelson. My friend’s house backs onto the tidal estuary. Both the house and the abundant rose filled garden have been created with lots of love and care and as soon as you walk through the door your whole being sighs with relief. Aah, a place where I can rest and be renewed!

A retreat is a space outside our challenging lives where we can switch off the busy mind and dive deeper into ourselves to remember what really matters. When we become very present with our experience we step into a space outside time, a state of pure being. When we share from this place we easily create a deep connection with others, a soul based community. It’s amazing how just one day can stretch into a timeless island of sanity and self nurturing.

Participating in a retreat is an opportunity to remember that simplicity is the key to fulfillment. Everything we need for life to be a deeply satisfying experience is here, now, in every moment. Much of the time we forget this simple fact because we are so busy running around searching and trying to create it somewhere else! It’s the mind which makes life complicated. When we succeed in stilling the mind, even for a few minutes, or for an hour, we enter the most delicious freedom.

You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars going from workshop to workshop looking for the Holy Grail. Here are three simple practices you can use to make every day a treat.

• Take five minutes a day to be totally present with your breathing. Just follow the breath in and out and enjoy the sensations. As you do so everything else fades into the background and you experience oneness with life.
• Take another five minutes a day to connect with nature. I mean really connect. Go outside in a state of presence and come to your senses. Look, taste, smell, listen, touch. Allow yourself to drink deep of nature’s beauty. Give yourself this gift.
• Then take another five minutes each day to really listen to someone you love. Really listen from that place of silent stillness within you. Open yourself to hear, not only the other’s words but their emotional tone, listen to what they’re not saying, to the spaces between words, and to what wants to emerge. Don’t interrupt, and drop any ideas of wanting to fix, change, disagree with or judge them. Just listen with the intention of seeing the same perfect beauty in this person that you have witnessed in nature.

I guarantee that if you follow these three simple practices every day, your life will transform. Of course, it’s easier in a group because when we come together with a shared intention we co-create a more expanded energy field which amplifies the higher state of consciousness. Held in the loving embrace of the Now, healing happens spontaneously, everything magically shifts into a new perspective, we see that everything we’ve always wanted was here all along and we simply have to show up, open up, and allow ourselves to experience fully.

The next Soul Sister’s Retreats are in Cable Bay on Sunday 13^th March 10.30-5. And in Golden Bay on Sunday March 20^th, 11-6.  Since this is near the autumn equinox we will be focusing on Harvesting our Gifts.

Rose Diamond, February 19^th 2011

Are you on a path of awakening?

If you are, you know that cultivating your consciousness is the most important contribution you can make. Maintaining a state of peace, openness, love and creativity, is the foundation for fulfillment in all areas of your life.

Those of you who have worked with me before know that my passion is creating safe and sacred spaces where everyone feels free to explore, discover and share deeply. I call such spaces, Soul Sanctuary , and I have been experimenting with different forms,both face to face and through telegatherings, over several years. By participating in such intentional sacred spaces, we connect at a heart and soul level and create a more powerful collective field of presence than any of us can alone, and discover our Oneness. Such experiences are empowering for all involved. An experience of Oneness is the key to transforming our world.

Soul Sanctuary is a weekly telegathering at 5pm ET,  10pm GMT, Sunday and 11am NZ time, Monday.   The first in the series is January 2^nd if you are in the States or UK and the 3^rd if you’re in New Zealand.

Each session will include:

• A relaxation and awareness process to bring you into presence.

• A sharing circle focusing on what you are currently aware of /focusing on  in your consciousness on a day to day basis.

• A Oneness Blessing.

The Oneness Blessing is a very simple yet powerful transfer of Divine energy which helps to balance the brain so that you naturally and easily experience more and more unity with all life. It is completely non-doctrinal and its only goal is to awaken as many people as possible to higher states of consciousness.

The Oneness Blessing provides different benefits to different people, depending on your particular needs. Here are some possible benefits when you receive the Oneness Blessing on a regular basis:

• More fulfillment, happiness and joy from within
• Less desire to seek for what you want outside yourself
• Deepening states of stillness and inner peace
• Less frustration, stress, overwhelm and disappointment
• Increasing ability to be free of drama, conflict and reactivity
• Ability to work with less effort and to naturally maintain a healthy balance
• Ability to let go of addictive patterns, alcohol, cigarettes, comfort food etc
• Growing sense of freedom, mastery, self worth, optimism and trust
• More energy freed up to focus on your creative passions and contributions
• Effortless movement towards what is health giving for your body and mind.

As your state of mind becomes more peaceful and positive, all aspects of your life improve: relationships, health, work, prosperity, service. Primarily, this is for the evolution of consciousness.

I am a trained Oneness Blessing giver and a committed member of a local group here in Nelson.

Recommended donation: $7 per session, paid through paypal.  I encourage you to see this as a tithe (a donation for spiritual service which prospers the giver as much as the receiver).

If you would like to join me on January 2^nd (US/UK) or 3^rd (NZ) please email me in good time and I will send you the access details. Please also forward this to others who you think might benefit. In time I will be putting up a webpage for this service.

Rose Diamond

December 29, 2010

Email: rose@awholenewworld.net

www.awholenewworld.net

How do you know what your unique gifts are? That’s a great question. And what I love about great questions is, as soon as you ask them the answers start to show up in the next person you meet, the book you pick up, from your dog or from the trees; the question becomes a magnet drawing to you what you need, and everything and everyone becomes your guide.

The first realization which comes to me when I contemplate this question is: your gifts aren’t in what you do, they are in who you are. When you truly, fully, authentically be who you are by showing up and being present, you are the gift!

This can be difficult to understand because most of us are action oriented, we want to do something and we want to master an art or a craft or a skill. Bringing our gifts into the world is part of our human nature to expand and evolve.  But our unique gift is in our being. Have you noticed for example when someone with a calm peaceful energy enters a room something shifts for everyone, they don’t have to say anything, it’s their state of being that makes the difference.

We’re all so self critical it’s difficult to accept that just being who we are is enough. Yet being fully who we are helps everyone. Co-creation and collaboration are much talked about these days; these are the skills we need to learn if we’re going to survive, thrive and evolve as a species. And co-creation starts with each of us playing our unique part by being fully who we are.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. I was privileged to live in New Zealand for twelve years and I think of it as my home. A feature of the New Zealand culture is the Heart Sharing Circle, influenced bu the hui of the  Maori. For those of you who haven’t participated, imagine a gathering of twelve or perhaps a hundred people seated in a circle.  The purpose of our gathering is to share our stories of who we are and what has meaning for us in our lives right now. The bigger purpose is, as we share our stories, we connect more deeply with each other and create community.

One by one we stand to speak. We pick up the talking stick or another object chosen to symbolize the power of the circle and to empower the speaker. You know it’s your turn to speak when your heart starts beating and the movement of your heart propels you to your feet.

I remember the first Heart Sharing Circle I took part in, it was a women’s circle. I’d been in New Zealand for a month and found my way to the Tauhara Centre, a spiritual education centre overlooking Lake Taupo and home of the Heart Politics movement. www.heartpolitics.org.nz  At a certain point my heart started beating so loud I couldn’t ignore it and I had to stand. Yet I had no idea what I was going to say. In the Heart Sharing Circle you stand and trust that the words will come; you wait in the silence until you know. When the words come, they are coming from you but they are also coming through you. Everyone in the circle is silent, present and attentive, and their presence creates a  focused energy field which enables you to connect with your own wisdom and truth in a new way. Speaking is a process of discovery because you haven’t rehearsed a speech and you’re not repeating what you already know. You are being in the moment and venturing into the unknown, discovering who you are in each new moment.

This is a truly awesome experience because when one person speaks from this place of truth and wisdom, it sparks the next person to find their truth and wisdom, and then the next and the next. And soon you realize you’re in a collective weaving in which each person holds a thread and all the threads are essential to the weave.

This to me is an example of what can happen when we simply show up and be present, listen deeply to ourselves and to each other and be receptive to what wants to express through us. There’s a bigger intelligence available to us all the time. I call it evolutionary intelligence, or in the words of the American novelist, John Steinbeck, the life-love-force present in everything. Finding our own gifts has a lot to do with  being open to the life-love-force, trusting whatever makes our heart beat faster, and learning how to intuitively receive that intelligence and bring it into form. Paradoxically, our gifts are expressions of our unique essence and they are also expressions of a deeper collective purpose.

We’d like you to approach our blog as if it is a Heart Sharing Circle. We see the blog as an interactive space for A Whole New World. Please feel free to introduce yourself, tell us who you are, what’s brought you here and what gifts and hopes you bring to the creation of A Whole New World.

Namaste,

Rose Diamond

Each one of us makes a difference and together we can do what seems impossible.

A version of this post first appeared in www.happyzine.co.nz

The image is a detail from A Whole New World by Mary Ryan, www.chrysalisfarmstudiogallery.com