Your suffering can break open at any moment, can shatter into Presence.
Jeff Foster
Co-Creative Mandalas have a vibration that anchors, activates specific qualities, and represents something about ourselves, the natural world, and the energy in the universe at a particular time. This year the mandalas support Aligning with Wisdom,
within mind, body, and spirit,
with the natural rhythms in nature,
and with the Great Mandala.
The mandala energy for this month is Presence.
It's been fun and illuminating to explore Presence and
all the ways it supports aligning with wisdom: Your wisdom--mind, body, and spirit--by listening to you inner guidance: How is your wisdom calling you to be present? By noticing the wisdom of nature, the intelligent power of life within a flower blooming, the change of seasons, the ebb and flow of the tides. By trusting the wisdom of the universe that always has your back--is always supporting you and co-creating with you.
This Co-Creative Mandala, "Presence", from a photograph of a tulip (symbolizes cherish the present) as is associated with the root solar plexus, heart, and crown chakras. It invites us to step fully into awareness of the felt sense of wakefulness, openness, and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experience. Your thoughts, feelings, and presence shape your reality. Reconnect with your true essence, step into transformation, and radiate your light into the world. The radiant power of Wholeness has always been within you. Now is the time to claim it.
Happy Earth Day!
This Earth Day, we invite you to honor this time by nourishing your body, mind, and spirit.
There’s something powerful that happens when we reconnect to the Earth beneath our feet, the breath in our lungs, and the healing rhythms of nature.
Have you ever noticed how spending time in the natural world has a way of awakening something within you—a sense of greater awareness, even wonder and awe?
This is because we’re intimately connected to the ever-changing rhythms of nature. It’s easy to forget when we’re focusing on work or zoning out in front of a screen! The truth is, your body and mind long to connect with sunshine, fresh air, birdsong, and breeze. Your frazzled nervous system can switch into “rest and digest” mode from being in the great outdoors, even for just a few minutes.
These are uncertain times, but to some extent, we're always navigating challenges, and many of those challenges are inter-related. What's happening within, what's happening in the world, what's happening to the Earth are all connected. This is the time for Presence--both the state of awareness and the quality of energy that each of us bring to our experience. It's that felt sense of wakefulness, openness, and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experiences.
Over the decades since I first followed my grandmother around the farm, watching how she tended to her flowers and the vegetable garden, I've come to appreciate how profoundly healing it is to get my hands into living soil. I did that today when I prepped the soil for planting onions and potatoes.
When we plant seeds, tend our vegetables, or cultivate flowers, we're not just nurturing green spaces—we're restoring our own sense of Presence, hope, and connection. Gardening is a metaphor for life. Just a few minutes, with the sun on my back, the breeze on my face, and the sounds of birds shifted my energy. I remembered my Wholeness.
Finding peace, Presence, and purpose in the garden is such a simple way to make a contribution to the planet's future. Gardening does more than grow food and flowers (although both are very important rewards for our efforts); it grows resilience and personal and global well-being.
Many of us realize, and celebrate, that the world as we have known it...doesn't exist anymore. Familiarity, certainty are over, no longer available. Perhaps, that's the way the human condition has always been.
For many, this is a moment of suffering--individually, collectively, globally. To move forward, we realize we can't turn away from our suffering or the suffering of others.
We're in a chrysalis moment. We're not quite seeing what comes next. Yet. Being in this state can feel messy, to say the least.
Right now, in this moment, we all stand at a doorway. On one side is the life we've known, including the familiar patterns, and the old limitations. On the other side is something new. A new awareness. A new way of being. A new brilliance that has always been ours to claim.
These times have so much chaos, upheaval and fear...along with such hopefulness, sweetness and trust...in our ability to birth a new humanity...a new earth.
In these uncertain times I've noticed that I long for answers. I long for something solid beneath my feet, for something that feels soothing to the fear, comforting to the hopelessness. Connecting to nature always grounds me.
Whatever it looks like, life is inviting us to embrace Presence--the felt sense that Ram Dass invited us to experience: Be Here Now.
So, how do we do that?
You may have the same experience that I have: I forget...the impermanence of suffering. I forget that all this shall pass...and is passing right now.
Then (perhaps not immediately), I remember, when I choose to bring Presence to the moment, when I let go of resistance, when I love myself and honor all my feelings--the guilt, shame, fear, despair, along with the hopefulness, the trust, the wonder, the awe, I often find that all my experiences are filled with new energy and life.
I love those moments when everything just feels right. Not in the moral sense, but more expansive and easy. A realization so clear that it feels like the sun breaking through the clouds. I notice that experience when I'm in the garden, surrounded by the energy of living plants, of the sights and sounds of nature--the bees, the breeze cooling my body, the birds flying in and out in search of seeds. Being in nature is one way to bring Presence to our experiences.
Presence is like the sun. Presence leads to change, just like the sun's life giving energy transforms the world around us and our world within.
How do you find those simple moments of Presence, which lead to coming home to your body, mind, and spirit--to aligning with wisdom--yours--your intuition, nature's--the intelligence that's found in the rhythm of the seasons, and the Universe--the co-creative source that always has your back?
At its most basic level presence– what we allow ourselves to notice and how we engage with the world – literally determines how we experience and navigate the world.
Sharon Salzberg
Right now, humanity is experiencing a great shift—one where we are realizing that our consciousness is not just shaped by the world around us but that we shape the world through our consciousness, with our Presence. Imagine the power in that! When you become aware of the co-creative force within you, your entire life can change.
Often, when we think of Presence, we think of being in a state of equanimity. But to be truly present, we need to be with everything that's arising, including fear and discomfort.
Whether the challenge is personal or political or global we can find our true vision and path forward only from a place of Presence. This seems particularly important in these times.
The journey to bringing Presence to our experience by aligning with wisdom isn't linear. It's more like a zig-zag path and an upward expanding spiral. It’s a deep, unfolding transformation. Sometimes it feels like warmth. Other times, like fire. And sometimes, like the weight of gravity pulling you toward your true purpose. But through it all, something within you is transforming—becoming brighter, stronger, and more fully alive.
Just like the sun's rays radiating through the clouds dissipate the fog, my resistance has no more substance than the fog. Then, the sorrow, the suffering, is gone.
Just like that, unexpectedly...
A child's laughter...
The kindness of a stranger...
A blossoming flower...
A moment of stillness...
Music that fills my heart with joy...
My experience is transformed.
There is so much to be gained by Presence, by being fully engaged in the moment, whatever that moment brings.
Feel your feelings, yes, breathe into all that moves in you, access your anger and your grief, speak your deepest and most authentic truth, of course, but also be available for the breaking-open of your suffering. Don't assume it is here for any longer than a moment. Let it visit, and let it leave. Let it visit again. Let it leave again.
The Guest House
by Jalaluddin Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
When you enter a state of deep Presence — through meditation, breath-work, a walk in nature, gardening or a quiet moment of reflection — you activate your body’s natural ability to heal, adapt, and regenerate. Resistance softens, tension disappears, and your cells realign, bringing you well-being from the inside out. At the deepest level, you are an active co-creator of your own healing, joy, and luminous potential.
Presence starts with our intention to bring awareness into everything we experience, everything we do, everything we feel in our relationships, interactions with strangers, at work, or at play. Whatever you do, do it with Presence and be your most expansive self. Pay attention to each moment, one day at a time.
It takes practice. The more you bring Presence to your experience, the easier it becomes to stop, breathe, and be aware and fully experience the moment.
When we choose the power of Presence we explore a fresh perspective on the present moment. Our decision to bring Presence to our lives weaves together the threads of our life tapestry--from the moment we wake up, throughout our entire day, and to the moment we turn off the lights at night. I find it so helpful and even comforting to hold this expansive perspective during the drama and chaos in the world. Placing the chaos of today into the context of Presence...lifts me up, and invites me honor fear so that I can move forward with trust, curiosity and awe.
And it is not just personal work—it is planetary. Because as each of us awakens and aligns with our wisdom, the wisdom of nature, and the wisdom of the universe, we contribute to the collective awakening of humanity.
From our little corner of the universe to yours, we’re wishing you beautiful Earth Day blessings--today and always.
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