1.

Empty of sight you gave yourself away
to those

who were blind to your gift–
as you were. You.

They devoured your sweet juices,
spit out the pith and rind of you

as you did. You.

2.

Years went by. Watchful, rind-thick, rind-bitter,
you cradled the memory of your treasure—

buried it
in a mountain cave

guarded by the stench of dragon breath.

You did. You.

3.

Your sweet citrus selves, deprived
of light, of air

shriveled, curled their pithy threads
around your dwindling heart.

In your dank cave, you dreamed of orange groves—
the sun-drenched country of your becoming.

4.

Now, on this dappled mountainside
you’ve built your home.

Windows open wide to a curved horizon.
Skylights, for visiting stars and spilled constellations.

A floor and walls of hand-rubbed stone.

You made this. You.

5.

Strangers sometimes climb the rocky path
to your front door.

You welcome them with cool water,
oranges in a blue clay bowl.

You do not give yourself away.
You do not withhold.

6.

You know this, now. You were always
yours to give.

Yours, and more than yours—
to take, to bury

to hold, nourish, offer, radiate.

What are the ways in which you’ve given yourself away?

To learn how to be present, and creatively sovereign, please join me for How to Rule Your World from the Inside Out, starting February 6th. You can listen to a recording of the free preview call here.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Sunday Poem #8
• A Horizon of Broken Stones
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This.

This log boom gliding silently
on pewter waves
tethered umbilically to a single
tug.

Squat, snub-nosed, face only a mother
could love–
This small bundle of muscle
and will

pulls a once-upon-a-time forest effortlessly–
a loggy wake.

O, the power of purposeful alignment!

The power of faithful service
hauling a forest

home.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• You are a Miracle
• The Things That Scare You – a video poem
• Give It Away: How to Get Your Heart’s Desire

And yet, inside every pattern, no matter how painful, frustrating, or debilitating it might be, is an aspect of you that holds your soul’s essence.

This inner self may be stuck in a story that she clings to, even as it fills her with pain. She may be unable to see beyond her drama, her dreams or nightmares, her version of how things should be, and aren’t.

He may be trapped in old stories of shame and blame. She did this to me. I always. He never. That’s just the way it is.

The seeds of pain burrow deep into the flesh of our stories, and sprout thorny thickets of suffering. The world around us becomes a desert in which only cacti can survive.

So we become cacti. All hard rind and prickly edges.

And the future that a cactus creates looks an awful lot like the desert. Just enough moisture, just enough shade, just enough nourishment to survive. Despite a hostile environment. Despite thin air and searing sun. Bleak survival.

What would your world look like, if you peeled away those stories? If the truth at the sweet heart of your inner selves is revealed?

The You that feels powerless holds in her heart the inner truth of Power. The You that is filled with shame holds the jewel of Sovereignty. The You that is humiliated knows the fertile essence of Humility.

The inner self who is so attached to her stories also holds, in her heart, the essence of your soul. In the jagged gape of your wounds she carries your treasure – that which greens your life and your world.

Your job is to remind her of the truth of her inner being. And to restore her to her rightful place in the ecology of your life, so you can create a future that emerges from your wholeness, from your true and sacred desire.

You can’t do this by getting rid of her. You can only do this through love and discernment, appreciation and more love.

Sweetheart, you say, show me what you know, deep inside you. Show me your true self.

And she will show you. As soon as you ask the question, the enchantment of the story she’s been living lifts, and she remembers her true name.

Earth Angel. Radiant Moon Path. Truth Lightning. Thirsty Root of Deep Desire. Mistress of Tides.

And then you say, I need you. I need your enthusiasm, your power, your joy, your willingness. With you, life is a glorious adventure. Without you, my world is a desert; I am tumbleweed.

You fall into each other’s arms. Embrace. Cry joyful tears. You’re home!

Then you sally forth together. Arm in arm, heart in heart.

Your togetherness shapes the world around you, naturally, to fit you, to hold your wholeness.

Like the sand cups the shell of a moon snail. Like the sky curves her blue body around the mountain’s peak.

Your life flows into the shape that holds you – in love, in tenderness, in the Earth’s rich abundance.

Join me for an eight-week adventure into the land of creative sovereignty, How to Rule Your World From the Inside Out.

Learn energy alchemy techniques and powerful practices to shape your inner kingdom.

Free preview call on Monday, January 9th at 5 pm Pacific Time. Details and registration here.

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We are earth angels. We have the power to shape our world through the choices we make, and through the qualities we cultivate, hold, embody and express.

Everything that exists in the material world has a spiritual counterpart, which holds the pattern or blueprint for its perfect unfolding. I call these subtle-energy beings Devas, a Sanskrit word that means “Shining Ones.”

Your home has its own Deva, as does your family and your business. There are Devas of place — of landscapes, cities and countries – and Devas of Nature, who hold the pattern for every tree and blade of grass, every body of water, rock, planet and galaxy.

Devas of spiritual qualities hold the pure essence of the qualities in their care.

Qualities such as love, service, tenderness, compassion, clarity, joy, play, light, adventure, humor and purpose are at the heart of all creation. They are the essence around which all incarnation takes shape, and they are the core values around which you build your life, your business, your family, and whatever else you choose to create.

By attuning to the Devas of spiritual qualities, developing relationships with them and partnering with them, you can cultivate your own ability to embody these qualities and radiate them into your life and your world.

These qualities are already within you, as seeds or potentials. But some of them may be more fully developed than others.

During this holiday season, when the pressure of entrenched expectations and old family patterns can trigger toxic emotions and unhealthy ways of relating, you can call on the Devas for help.

When Cousin Susan makes the same joking reference to your weight or your unmarried status that she makes every year; when Uncle Bob launches into his theory that global warming is a left-wing plot to take over the world; when you find yourself wondering whether you were captured by an alien tribe and forced into this family against your will as a baby – call on the Deva of Clarity, Simplicity, Peace, Wisdom, Appreciation, Humor – or any of the qualities with which you want to fill yourself, your home, your relationships, and your world.

By setting a clear intention to embody these qualities, you have the power to choose your own experience, and to shape the situations that unfold around you. But by itself, your personal power is limited. When you call on a Deva for help, support and partnership, it lends its power to yours, to help you hold a field of love and blessing that embraces everyone at your holiday table.

Through this sacred, creative partnership, miracles happen. Conflict, projections, old stories and bitterness melt in the light of the Sacred, of whom we are all fractals (even Uncle Bob!).

In any situation, the clearest, strongest energy prevails. When that energy is one you intentionally set, and hold as a field for everyone around you to participate in, if they choose, you become a source of light, love and blessing.

As my gift to you – for the holidays, and for the rest of your life, if you wish – my wonderful designer, Richard Miller, and I have created a set of online Deva cards for you to explore and play with. They come with written instructions as well as a guided audio meditation to help you focus and clarify your intention, and choose a Deva to help you fulfill it.

You can use these cards to deepen your relationships with the Devas of soul qualities, and to develop these qualities more fully within yourself. Share the cards with the people you love. Use them every day, if you like, to set an intention for your day. Play with them in various ways, and let me know what happens in your world as you develop deeper relationships with these Devas.

My dearest wish for you is that you express the radiance, beauty and miracle of your inner being, and bring the power of your presence to bless and shape a world in which you and everyone you love can truly flourish.

Many blessings to you and your beloveds in this season of the returning light.

Love, Hiro

PS: Here’s the link to the online Deva Cards.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• What I learned about the healing power of memory from a song and dance routine at my local theater. . .
• Going Away
• Life Unfolding

For the most part, these are changes we have actively chosen — and they are evolutionary in their effects. And yet, some of our inner selves are more comfortable with change than others who might be younger, more vulnerable, more afraid.

This brief video poem is my offering of love to our scared, vulnerable selves — a reminder that our beingness spans both earth and sky…and everything in between.

How do you engage with fear? What do you do to meet it, and yourself, with love?

For another perspective, take the things that scare you over to the Deva Cards page, and see what the Devas have to offer.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• The Things That Scare You
• You are a Miracle
• Sunday Poem #7

Free of the Not-Enoughs and Shoulds–the Have-To’s and Maybe’s and But’s–may you discover, celebrate and share the miracle that is you.

Play with me! I’d love it if you’d share, in the comments, one or two or three things about you that are miraculous. Begin by affirming this truth: “I am a miracle!” Then tell us how you express your miraculous self in your world.

Watch this on YouTube and share it with the people you love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnUJLrQsuJc

A rainbow shower of thanks to my friends, Solaye Snider and Angie Wheeler, for collaborating with me to create this video. Deep gratitude to Jonathan Fields, who first published this poem on his blog. A bow from my heart to my miraculous family and friends–and to each of you, for inspiring You Are a Miracle.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Tug Power
• The Things That Scare You – a video poem
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Some years ago, I spent two weeks at an Ayurvedic resort in the mountains near Pune, in Western India. The resort overlooked a clear blue lake, set like a jewel in a bowl of scrubby hills the color of deer-hide. The nearest town was a couple of hours’ drive away, along a single, bumpy, winding road.

After a fortnight of exquisite, healing silence—no ringing phones, no tv or radio. Just the chirping of crickets at night; the chatter and laughter of the staff near the central building that housed the kitchen and offices—my friend and I went for a walk down the dusty road to a makeshift encampment below, where a ragged road-crew was hard at work rebuilding a portion of the road that had washed away the previous monsoon.

Several families lived by the side of the road in little shanties cobbled together out of sticks and branches; bits of frayed, sun-bleached cloth; sheets of tin hammered out from old oil drums, their colored logos scratched and dented but still visible.

The men did the heavy work—hauling boulders onto the work site in hand-carts, loading and unloading the idling truck that spewed fumes into the mountain air, manning the machine that spread hot tar onto the prepared road bed.

The women carried rocks in shallow metal basins balanced on their heads. Some of them cooked over open fires, yelled at toddlers to get out of the way of heavy machinery, wiped the runny noses of babies slung across their hips.

And then, there were the children, bent over like little elves, smashing rocks into smaller pieces to be loaded onto the idling lorry, which would haul them down the road where the men would spread the crushed rock onto the red laterite mud to make a new road bed.

These kids ranged in age from two or three to eight or ten—it’s hard to tell how old they were because malnutrition keeps them small and and the relentless sun under which they worked all day had wizened their skin to leather.

We stopped to chat with them. My friend, who lives in Pune, translated. The kids gathered around us, chattering excitedly as they bit into the snacks and sweets we’d brought them from the tiny roadside shop a couple of miles away.

We asked them the usual questions. They answered, as kids do–vague about the things that matter more to grownups than to children; clear and forthright about what’s vivid to them.

No, they did not go to school. Their parents moved around the country, going wherever the work was, so they never stayed in one place long enough to go to school. Besides, one of them said proudly, they were needed. Their families depended on their labor, for food and shelter from the rain.

What did they want to be when they grew up, we asked.

There was a moment’s pensive silence. Then, a chorus of high-pitched voices: “To be a stone-breaker!” “I want to be the fastest, bestest stone-breaker”, said one green-eyed beauty, shyly.

“Stone-breaker! Stone breaker!” they called, excited to be asked; delighted to have a calling of their own.

Then a young man in ragged yellow shorts—all of six years old; clearly the leader of the pack—yelled out loud: “I’m not going to be a stone breaker! I’m going to be the man who drives the lorry that carries the broken stones!”

His voice was triumphant; his dusty face glowed. The children fell silent, and looked at him with something like wonder.

Stones.

This young man’s vision for himself was more expansive than anything these children—or anyone in their families—had ever dreamed of.

And, it emerged from the Land of Broken Stones. Its horizon was circumscribed by stones: breaking them; transporting them; building roads with them. That was their world. That was who they believed themselves to be.

We left them with sticky hugs and bottles of cold, orange Fanta. Tears (mine). Happy waves and calls of “Bye-bye!”

The next day, I was taking a train back to Bombay, then a flight home to Canada. My friend promised to connect with an NGO in Pune, who she said would send someone out to get these kids into the village school; would bring along a mobile medic to check and treat them for ringworm and rickets.

This morning, I woke up thinking about those children. And about the ways in which our identity is shaped by the world we know. Until we discover who we truly are, and discover our power to shape our own horizons.

Who do you believe yourself to be? What is your horizon of Broken Stones? What lies beyond it — beyond the limits of your imagination?

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• What You Know Now
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The story the season tells is written in the clouds that hover high above the bay – reflected in swaths of pewter on a downy sea. It’s scribbled in the dark outlines of cedar trees etched against the sky. It sings and shouts among the bright stars of fallen leaves gleaming on frosty ground.

We don’t know how cold this winter will be. We tell ourselves stories based on our experiences of winters past.

The morning – more than twenty years ago! – I looked out my kitchen window to see my boys hurtle down the snowy slope of the hillside behind our house in their homemade toboggan, shrieking with excitement, their voices shattering the brittle winter air.

They’d built an obstacle course for themselves, out of snow. Mounds of snow formed mini-hillocks that sent their toboggan flying before it landed with a crash and a thud on the other side.

Theirs was an adventure story, epic in its tale of perils overcome, mountains conquered; the sudden thrill of veering off course, spinning off their sled, landing headfirst into the arms of a snow bank.

They learned, through their play, to shape their own obstacles, to sail over them undeterred by the prospect of falling, to fly and to trust their landing.

They’re young men now, married, with families of their own. I see, in the men they’ve become, the ways in which their stories have shaped them.

I see it in their irrepressibly playful, adventurous spirit; in their willingness to climb, to fall, to land on unmapped ground. Their deep knowing that they are loved, safe, creative and powerful.

We tell ourselves stories about the world around us, about our place in it. About who we are, how we live, what we can and cannot be. We tell stories about what we can create, enjoy, experience – and what our experiences mean, how we feel about them.

Those stories shape us. They shape the world around us as surely as if we were grabbing a handful of snow and shaping it into a mound, a hillock, a mountain.

Our stories thrill and delight us, or they scare us into submission, or they grow us into the radiant possibilities of our astonishing selves.

Our stories grow the world around us – an Emerald City or a slum; a world brimming with love and possibility for everyone, or a world in which the treasure is guarded by dragons slavering at the gates of moated castles behind whose walls the chosen few feast on bread stolen from the mouths of children, the elderly — those who are poor, those who are most deeply vulnerable.

The old stories are exhausted. The world they shaped is choking on toxic fumes of fear, emptiness, rage and shame.

As I write this, in a thousand cities around the globe, people are gathering. They’re gathering to sing new songs, to tell new stories. In London and Lima, Cape Town and Kuala Lumpur, New York and New South Wales, stories are rising. From paved roads and cobbled streets, from city squares and dirt maidans – from the heart of the Earth, new stories are being born.

The stories you tell are powerful. The story of your life, the story of your business, shapes the larger story of the world in which we – and our children, and our children’s children – will live.

Have you given away your power to shape your own story?

Take your stories back. Find the stories that belong to you. Sing them into being. Call them out loud, by their true names.

Your stories shape the world in which you live: Today. Tomorrow. Next week. Next year.

Join me and a community of creative story-shapers, for a four-week adventure to craft a new story for your life, for your business, and for your world: Dreaming in the Dark. November 2nd through 23rd.

Free preview call next Monday, October 24th at 5 pm Pacific Time. Early registration discount ends next Tuesday, October 25th.

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• To Change a Pattern, Create a New Story
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She knows her work is valuable. She knows her business makes a tremendous contribution to her clients and customers. She knows this slump is temporary.

And yet, she’s frustrated, and scared.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

As I tune into her energy field, I see the inner stories that are swirling around and through her right now.

Stories of Not-Enough. Stories of Do-This! and Don’t-Do-That! Or Else!

Stories that she is alone. That she can rely on no-one but herself. Not Enough collides head-on with Have To and Must and Should.

I’ve been there. Chances are, so have you.

When business is flowing like a sparkling stream of champagne, and the mouths of the Not Enoughs are so full of scrumptiousness – Cake! Chocolate! Chocolate cake! – that they can’t wail out their warnings of doom, we forget that they’re there.

We forget that they believe their stories. Those stories they hunch over like a sack of stones slung across their painfully bent backs.

Stories of lack and not-enoughness hurt your heart. They swirl a smoke-screen of fear around you, so you can’t see the light of your soul.

And the world sees your fear. It sees your heartache and self-doubt. It feels your urgency, and responds by staying away from you, from your business.

You may think you’re hiding these things, but you cannot hide the truth of your being.

It shows up in your life. It shows up in your business.

So, what do you do?

My client – who is brilliant, and creative – was temporarily hijacked by her Not-Enoughs and Have-To’s. They wailed in frustration.

“I’m doing everything right,” they/she said. “I’m taking care of myself. I finally recognize that taking care of my body comes first. When I do that, my business thrives. Except – it’s not working!”

Of course it’s not working.

Her Not-Enough is afraid that her needs won’t be met. And her fear overrides her love, so her relationship with her body changes from one of love, unity and tenderness to something colder, more transactional.

Not: “I take care of you because I love you. Because I want you to flourish and be your best and happiest self.”

But, rather: “I’ll take care of you so that my business will flourish. I’ll take care of you so that this slump will end. Sales will go up again.”

It’s a bit like being in bed with your beloved, who turns to you with love, passion and delight, and breathes into your ear: “I love you. Let’s make love.”

And you say, with a worried frown: “Yeah, okay. Maybe it’ll help relieve my stress.”

It may indeed relieve your stress; but it will almost certainly cause problems in your relationship.

Your relationship with your body and your inner being is the foundation for all your relationships.

When your relationship with your body is transactional – I’ll give you this so you can get me that – then your relationships with your clients and customers will be transactional too.

Not: “I offer this, knowing it will benefit you and bring you into greater wholeness and coherency within yourself. And – because Wholeness benefits everyone – by serving you with integrity and love, I will also serve myself and my business. The same Wholeness that brings you benefit and blessing will also bring me what I need.”

But: “I offer this because I’m scared that my needs won’t be met. I need you to buy this because if you don’t, I’ll be homeless, or at least, I won’t have enough chocolate cake.”

The difference may appear to be subtle.

When you place the source of your sustenance out there, you hand over your power, and responsibility for your survival, to someone else. Then, you have to manipulate and control them to get them to give you the sustenance you need.

It makes for poor relationships. And it’s not good for business.

Traditional marketing advice invariably goes something like this:

1. Address people’s pain. Where are they hurting?
2. Talk about the benefits. How will your products and services help them?

However: if you’re addressing your clients’ and customers’ pain because you’re afraid you won’t survive if they don’t buy from you, then the message that goes out over the subtle energy airwaves is one of lack and manipulation.

It will draw to you clients and customers who believe in Not Enough, and are manipulated by their fears. You’ll perpetuate the pain you’re in, by extending it out into the world of your business.

If you want to change the pattern, create a new story.

1. Begin by acknowledging – with tenderness and compassion – the story you’ve been living.
2. Feel the pain it causes you; forgive yourself; release the story.
3. Attune to the qualities you want to bring into your life and your world.
4. Shape your new story, with these qualities at its heart.

If you’d like to go through this process in community with others, and with the structured support of a class, please join me for Dreaming in the Dark.

Over the course of four weeks, November 2 through 23rd, we’ll explore the story you and your business have been living this year. And you’ll shape a new story for your business and your life for 2012.

You’ll meet the characters who live in the stories of your past, and develop loving relationships with the inner selves and allies who create and inhabit your future.

You’ll receive two classes as audio downloads with accompanying pdfs, which you can listen to and read at your own pace. And, we’ll have two LIVE calls where you can ask questions, share your discoveries and insights, and integrate the class materials.

Many of you want to work with me privately, and can’t afford to do so. My private session fee is $550 per hour. Private retreats with me begin at $2500 per day.

My intention, with this class, is to offer an affordable way of getting skilled support to release the stories that no longer serve you. And to consciously create the stories you want to live and contribute to your world now.

Which stories are you summoning now? Which ones do you want to release? What stands in your way?

The early registration discount for Dreaming in the Dark ends on October 25th. Join me for a free preview call, Monday, October 24th at 5 pm Pacific Time/8 pm ET. Register here.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Dreaming in the Dark
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Dark when I wake up. Dark when I go to bed. Murky, much of the day — autumn clouds, mist and rain muffle the contours of the Pacific Northwest landscape where I live.

Light. The memory of light.

Beneath the closed eyelids of night, the sun shines.

I can’t see it, but I know it’s there.

The sun shines in my belly, in my heart. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there. Its deep, warm hum fills my body — a hive of honeybees.

I love the night; its tender, velvet skin. Intimate, friendly — innocent. Newborn.

A spill of stars glimmering – small footprints across the sky.

A reminder. The floor of home — the earth beneath my feet; its ceiling — the deeply woven thatch of the universe. Its hearth, the sun.

Some days, that’s all I know. Some days, that’s all I need to know.

The to-do lists, the push and pull of clock-time – momentarily dissolved in the great river of stars.

This is the place of dreaming. This is the time when my future sails downriver to meet me. To play.

The silver current of its life mingles with mine – an unfolding miracle of light, emerging.

Making the long journey from There to Here.

Dreaming in the dark.

Come, play with me. Dream your own dreams into being. Join me and a community of creative folks for Dreaming in the Dark: Write the New Story of Your Business for 2012. November 2 through 23.

On Tuesday, October 18th at 9 am Pacific Time, I am presenting a workshop on creating abundance in partnership with the soul of your business at Molly Gordon’s (no-cost) Self-Employment Telesummit. Molly’s mission is to end the cycle of under-earning among self-employed people. Join me, and a host of other speakers for useful, practical ideas on how to grow your business sustainably and in alignment with your values.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• To Change a Pattern, Create a New Story
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• Desire