by Thomas Cary Kinder

Morning glory blue–that is what my eye looks for on summer mornings, a flower or many flowers opening on the vines.  I wake up thirsting for more.  It diminishes the day, it dims me, when I cannot drink in that pleasure I am craving.

The wide open sky of the flower draws me in, but it is the light at the heart’s core that is the destination it has in mind for me.  It hopes I am not one of those who flies by or settles for petals.  It prays I will be a pollinator and dive into that light and help it seed the world with more of the beauty we are all born to share.

I confess that I often see only the blue, only the lovely surface.  I rush on drunk from one sip, calling it more than enough.  It takes time to move to the core.  Look deeply into this photograph and see what you feel.

It feels to me as if there is a sun down there in the center of all that sky, a powerful force and source of life.

It feels as if there is something waiting in that tunnel that wants to come forth, something the world needs.  I feel its urgency to make fertile the seed.  I want to help.

I feel that this tunnel leads to the light that dwells at the heart of all things, and if I dive into it here, I could swim anywhere in the universe.  If I help this light, I help all light.  If I know deeply its light, I know better your light.

I want to find that glow inside myself, inside every moment.  Where is it in me?  Where is it in this moment?

I want to help you find yours, too.  There are proven ways to do it, and we live in an extremely exciting time because ancient ways are being revived and new ones are evolving, blossoming from the intertwining strands of the old.  Here are two ways we can find our heart’s core light:

First, contemplative practices slow us down so we look beyond the beautiful blue surface to the Golden Room depths.  They diminish dependency and addiction’s dullness and they sharpen our inner senses so that we notice and know much more.

Contemplative practices help us rise to higher developmental stages of consciousness, they help us delve into deeper states of spiritual awareness, and so by training ourselves in meditation or Centering Prayer, mindfulness and heartfulness, we gain the skills we need to follow the light to its deepest source, the heart’s core within us.

Even one fully conscious, slow breath, pausing instead of rushing past a morning glory, can open our vision a crack to new perception and understanding.  One twenty minute session of letting thoughts go and letting feelings be can help us wake afterwards to glimpse what is of most importance, what gives our lives meaning and what we need to do about it right now.  Benefits come from a single step; the more steps we take the greater the transformation.  Different practices work for different people–seek and you will find the ones that work for you.

Every major religion has a contemplative or mystical tradition within it that can train you, and there are many secular teachers of meditation and mindfulness.  You have heard about the many benefits, and they are all true.  If you have not yet been moved to do it for your health and well being, do it because this hurting earth needs you to find that light that is uniquely yours and bring it forth.

Please!  We need you to do this!

Life Planning is the second tool.  It is also known as Financial Life Planning, because the majority of people who provide it so far are financial life planners who are capable not only of helping us identify our dream but also creating the financial architecture to make it real.  A strong minority of Life Planners are coaches or clergy or social workers.

I invite you to go to this website, register for free and begin working through it slowly.  If you can afford it, buy the book that goes with the site, or better yet, if you are in a position to do so, use the site’s directory of Registered Life Planners and make some inquiries until you find the right one to coach you through the process.  Also, you can keep reading thegoldenroom.net postings because I will be talking much more about this.  Here is the site: https://www.lifeplanningforyou.com/

Full disclosure: my brother, George Kinder, is the founder of the EVOKE process of Life Planning.  I am a Registered Life Planner and a past trainer of Life Planners, but I gain nothing by recommending this to you—nothing but the joy of thinking of you finding your deepest heart’s core light and following where that torch leads until you solve every obstacle that has held you back from living your calling as fully as you can.

Contemplative practices and the EVOKE Life Planning process go hand in hand.  They both lead us to higher developmental stages that enable us to release our creative potential and inspire us to contribute to our community and be a blessing to all we meet.

We can learn to live wide open like this morning glory.  It can change our day.  It can change our world.