Lina Cuartas's Blog, page 3

A Wild Woman

So, unleash your mount and let's go meet the rainbow...
NOONE, and I really mean NOONE
can tame a wild woman...
a wise, stubborn man will only embrace her spirit and join her wild tirade, and seduce her heart by reliving the sacred dance of love....

Desata pues tu corcel y vámonos al encuentro del arcoiris...
NADIE, y en realidad insisto, NADIE puede domesticar a una mujer salvaje...
un hombre sabio y testarudo tan sólo se acoplará a su espíritu y se entregará a su cabalgata salvaje, y seducirá su corazón reviviendo la danza sagrada del amor...

The Deeper Wound 9/11

A flood of memories...
9/11 is like a scar on our collective soul. When I sought solace, a book by Deepak Chopra, called "The Deeper Wound" helped me through. I never owned a copy, a dear friend of mine lent me hers. I met Tooba in a playground in Dallas, we poured our souls and shared our personal stories. She was Afghan, had been brought up in a Russian occupied compound and was married to an Iranian who was obsessive about collecting junk in garage sales. I was a Colombian, living in the urban jungle of impersonal, petulant Dallas, and was trying to understand my childhood wounds and the reality of feeling like a square peg in a round hole, our immigrant tales united us and our women's hearts drew us together. She told me about this book and how it had changed her heart. I never saw Tooba after I moved away from Dallas, but "The Deeper Wound" has become a part of my being, thanks to Tooba. That is the enduring power of a book!I copied the book on my journal, realized the therapeutic power it had and started translating it right away, made copies and have given away at least 25 of them. It is a life-altering book and today, I choose one of my favorite parts to honor those who were sacrificed eleven years ago. "Inside you is a space that NOTHING and NOONE can touch. Your body is like a house that gives shape to this space of peace and silence. When a house falls down, roof and walls tumble, but no harm is done to the space inside. In death we lose our bodily definition, but the inner space of peace is never harmed. Devote some time in your day to go inward and find your peace...It is important to remember that anything you can do to expand your awareness will automatically counter evil. Be gentle when you are tempted to be harsh. Pay attention when you are tempted to turn a blind eye. Accept that the negativity you are feeling belongs to you when you are tempted to blame someone else. Personal transformation on this level is the highest way to combat evil. Transformation does not come about by being touched with a magic wand. Habit and use apply here, too.If you find even the smallest reasons for sending out intentions of love, tolerance, forgiveness and peace, these centers will grow inside your mind. Your spirit counts on this growth."

A flood of memories... 9/11 is like a scar on...

A flood of memories...
9/11 is like a scar on our collective soul. When I sought solace, a book by Deepak Chopra, called "The Deeper Wound" helped me through. I never owned a copy, a dear friend of mine lent me hers. I met Tooba in a playground in Dallas, we poured our souls and shared our personal stories. She was Afghan, had been brought up in a Russian occupied compound and was married to an Iranian who was obsessive about collecting junk in garage sales. I was a Colombian, living in the urban jungle of impersonal, petulant Dallas, and was trying to understand my childhood wounds and the reality of feeling like a square peg in a round hole, our immigrant tales united us and our women's hearts drew us together. She told me about this book and how it had changed her heart. I never saw Tooba after I moved away from Dallas, but "The Deeper Wound" has become a part of my being, thanks to Tooba. That is the enduring power of a book!I copied the book on my journal, realized the therapeutic power it had and started translating it right away, made copies and have given away at least 25 of them. It is a life-altering book and today, I choose one of my favorite parts to honor those who were sacrificed eleven years ago. "Inside you is a space that NOTHING and NOONE can touch. Your body is like a house that gives shape to this space of peace and silence. When a house falls down, roof and walls tumble, but no harm is done to the space inside. In death we lose our bodily definition, but the inner space of peace is never harmed. Devote some time in your day to go inward and find your peace...It is important to remember that anything you can do to expand your awareness will automatically counter evil. Be gentle when you are tempted to be harsh. Pay attention when you are tempted to turn a blind eye. Accept that the negativity you are feeling belongs to you when you are tempted to blame someone else. Personal transformation on this level is the highest way to combat evil. Transformation does not come about by being touched with a magic wand. Habit and use apply here, too.If you find even the smallest reasons for sending out intentions of love, tolerance, forgiveness and peace, these centers will grow inside your mind. Your spirit counts on this growth."

Meditation #6- Being held, loved and cherished... in Mom's hands!

Meditation #6 Being held, loved and cherished...in Mom's hands!

I just finished watching a life-asserting documentary, "Happy", and it gave me the nudge I needed to sit down to ponder about our next stop down this exciting exploration of self. We celebrated our birth this last week, it was all about crossing the threshold into your life. Now we are tiny babies, and we are completely dependent on other's care and attention. In "Happy", even though many different culture's level and paths of attainment of happiness are discussed, when analyzing the most primitive of cultures in Africa, a powerful idea is presented. We learn about total joy and surrender from our Mothers, the first caregivers, who responding, not to "culture or education", as the Dalai Lama points out, they care and tend to us out of compassion, because it is in our nature. Our first happiness lessons are taught by the self-less acts of their love and attention and they allow us to learn whether the world is a safe place that will respond to our needs, although in some cases, when an infant's necessities are neglected, a crucial tenet of character is weakened.Macrina Wiederkehr chooses the rainbow as the symbol for this meditation in her book "Behold Your Life". She defines it at a sign of friendship between the Creator and the Created, but then she recalls Rabindranath Tagore's words, where he asserted that every time that a child is born, it comes bearing a message of joy: God is not discouraged, he still has hope and this new child is the proof. Now, there's a reminder that I wished would flash in neon lights in every corner of every city, where babies are neglected, abused and often discarded as trash. Every child is a Baby Jesus, the vessel of potential for change, hope and redemption. Every child is also a new start, a beginning and a seed for the future. This week, I would like to invite you all to watch "Happy", the documentary, because of the Happiness lessons it refreshes, mentioning meditation specifically as a crucial brain-enhancing practice. Watch and delight in its powerful wisdom, let the message be absorbed by your cells and your bones and renew your contract with your joy, with the rainbow of hope and friendship that lighted your heart when you looked into your mother's eyes. Remember, also, that life holds as many surprises as Mom always had for each one of us, treats and gestures of care and devotion, and that the more happiness you have, the more we all have. =)With immense love, Lina.

Self and The Soul- Why Meditations?

CONSCIOUSNESS
AWARENESS
SELF
This morning, I had reviewed my recent writings and I wondered why I had chosen to call them Meditations. I am immersed in a wonderful present I got yesterday, my Birthday is still showering its blessings. This extraordinary gift was a book, given to me by a sister soul, and its title seemed to reveal what I have been feeling lately, as I saw the picture Susi took of m
e, as I traveled all month with the love of my life and as I look at the watch and taking the kids to school and picking them up no longer structures my days: the title that seemed to fit me like a new hat : "The Untethered Soul". As I navigate its wealth, I found an answer to my early morning question:
"When you contemplate the nature of Self, you are meditating. That is why meditation is the highest state. It is the return to the root of your being, the simple awareness of being aware.Once you become conscious of the consciousness itself, you attain a totally different state. You are now aware of who you are. You have become and awakened being. It's really the most natural thing in the world. Here I am. Here I always was. It's like you have been on the couch watching TV, but you were so totally immersed in the show that you forgot where you were. Someone shook you, and now you are back to the awareness that you're sitting on the couch watching TV. NOthing else changed. You simply stopped projecting your sense of self onto that particular object of consciousness. You WOKE UP. That is spirituality. That is the nature of self. That is who you are.
...this world ceases to be a problem. It's just something you are watching. It keeps changing, but there is no sense of that being a problem. The more you are willing to just let the world be something you're aware of, the more it will let you be who you are."

The Grand Debut: Meditation #5I wanted to call the day of...

The Grand Debut: Meditation #5
I wanted to call the day of being born a magnificent debut because that is precisely how I conceive it. I remember reading a children's book that described for the reader how, when he or she was born, aquatic creatures held their breath to see who had come to join life on earth, the winged beings who fluttered in the air hovered like hummingbirds in awe, and creepers
 and crawlers, trotters and runners, two footed and four, on every corner of every land mass, felt the presence of a new life coming to join their existence on Earth, hoping this was a Builder, a Defender, knowing each new human life had the potential to be a ray of life, of hope and love.
We are each born into homes where our arrival required preparation, nesting and anticipation. The practicalities of our needs were tended, in varying degrees of comfort, and we thrived and grew. Yet, every one of us carried within the desire to create, to be something specific and unique in the world, a sacred seed of potential. Perhaps the environment in which we were brought up fed our physical growth, but not always tended to the longing and need for meaning that our souls longed for. The tide of urgency ebbs and flows, but we can all recognize the thrust of a dream, an intense desire, a calling.
When we were born, this drive of spirit was intact, housed within our hearts, postponed until our bodies, minds and souls evolved. Life in its twisted paths and labyrinths distracts us so efficiently that we often forget, some of us willfully choose to ignore, those flickers of passion.
Today we are reborn, and we will release our hearts, let them soar on fluttering wings in order to remind us what it is that was planted within, a desire for transcendence, a beacon of light that does not doubt, fear or withdraw. We are also summoned to be each other's midwives, and accompany and encourage the re-birth of confidence, of faith, of belief, desire and joy, all that is needed is love.
Celebrate your birth this week, have a party if possible, balloons, cake and guests would be great, and renew your contract with life, commit to live like you mean it, and hold on to the wonder and enthusiasm in a baby's eyes. You are a dazzling star on a Grand Debut!

A fruit for every taste is to be found!!! Meditations recap

I have so immensely enjoyed these first steps on our journey down memory lane, as we go back to ponder on our existence, even prior to being in the womb, we looked back at our pre-human essence and found cosmic dust. We focused on the immensity of it all and then in the minuscule, the magic of the tiny pieces that make up the puzzle of interconnected life. We moved onto conception and the spark of love that created our first cells and now we will move on to the time in the Golden Cocoon. Still, I have realized I have friends who seek the meditation in English, and those who await my post in Spanish, so I have decided to split the two into separate blogs. On Facebook, I post the English version first, then the Spanish version. The amazonquest blog will house our English conversation and luzdeluna will house the Spanish version, starting with the ones posted next week, last week of August. Please do post comments and feel free to share your thoughts or questions on either platform.
With love,
Lina Cuartas.

A fruit for every taste is to be found!!!

I have so immensely enjoyed these first steps on our journey down memory lane, as we go back to ponder on our existence, even prior to being in the womb, we looked back at our pre-human essence and found cosmic dust. We focused on the immensity of it all and then in the minuscule, the magic of the tiny pieces that make up the puzzle of interconnected life. We moved onto conception and the spark of love that created our first cells and now we will move on to the time in the Golden Cocoon. Still, I have realized I have friends who seek the meditation in English, and those who await my post in Spanish, so I have decided to split the two into separate blogs. On Facebook, I post the English version first, then the Spanish version. The amazonquest blog will house our English conversation and luzdeluna will house the Spanish version, starting with the ones posted next week, last week of August. Please do post comments and feel free to share your thoughts or questions on either platform.
With love,
Lina Cuartas.

Meditation#1 A Meditation on Cosmic Dust

The Beginning and the End- A Meditation on Cosmic Dust
We are all made of cosmic dust, and cosmic dust we will become again. I had heard this over and over again, but the few times it has really made sense and I have thoroughly felt the lack of division and an intense sense of connection with all of creation, this realization has always been achieved by the sublime amazement Nature inspires in me.
I still remember the first time I saw the ocean. I couldn't get enough of it, I tasted it, I swallowed it, I swam in it, I did not want to leave, even though I looked as red as a lobster, but I just did not see the point of leaving if my heart had seemed to find its perfect playground. But I had to leave, and always, when I find my way back to the majesty of the sea, enveloping me with its salty taste and its constant motion, I feel right at home. I longed to go deep into the forest in this same passionate way too, and when I first flew over the majestic canopy of thick green tones, from emerald to lime, it beckoned like a living carpet, inviting me to dive in. Seduced by its wild mysteries, I felt an even stronger sense of belonging. The rhythms of life and death seem to be so spontaneous in all of nature's scenarios; decay and rebirth seem to fuse into each other seamlessly, with or without interference of man-made creation or distraction, and creatures large and small follow their instincts, live fully, die and contribute to the web of life.
And so shall I. I was part of this exchange of cells and matter before death, I was already contained in this universe before I assumed this human form, and as dust, once again, I will never really disappear, never cease to exist, just change shape, and perhaps glitter in the sunlight when a child of tomorrow opens the window to reveal a brand new day.

Meditation #3 A Spark of Love

Meditation #3 A Spark of LoveThis week will allow us to explore the gratitude we owe to the two beings whom, in a selfless moment of surrender, deleted the barriers that separate individuals and by fusing their humanities, created the magic portal that allowed each one of us to enter this world. This is the day of my conception, I know I was conceived in love and in a specific place, in a tiny cozy home in Medellín, Colombia. There was hope, faith and purpose in the act of communal creation that resulted in my pulsing heart. Life would become tangled and estrange these two human beings, Jaime and María del Pilar, eventually leading them on completely independent paths. Yet, today I rejoice in that sacred moment when they answered my knock on the door and allowed me to enter the world as a result of a spark of love. I said yes to life and my mom housed me within her body for nine whole months. My heart is full of gratitude to my parents, both of them, with all their frailties and their gifts, they allowed me to be who I am. Even though we might not remember or know specifics about the story of our conception, we can ponder about that season of becoming, those first cells multiplying at phenomenal speeds, pulsing with life, creating differentiated structures, growing within a carefully crafted plan, minute extremities, throbbing with purpose, each and every detail of a tiny, perfect person unfolding in order to carry out a divine design. I imagine the joy of the Creator, of the Magic originator, rejoicing in that miracle, in the splendor of this physical expression of Hope, Life and Love. This was the beginning of the Sacred mystery of my Life, a spark of love within the cloud of unknowing that surrounded two lives, willing to stake a claim of belief in the world by creating a new life, mine to decipher and to develop, to unpack and evolve. In gratitude I celebrate my beginning, brimming with Amazing Grace!