The teachers

It seems completely plausible that our souls make promises or contracts to one another before we incarnate, whereby we make agreements to support the souls evolution toward the highest power: love. One of the most obvious contracts is that of the teacher, and in my mind, this whole beautiful planet is a classroom with playground attached, so a most obvious way to support each other is through the teacher archetype. 
For instance, my third grade teacher, Mrs. Stark,  was under contract to teach me the multiplication table.  While I was learning it,  I had  no sense of how the information was going to impact my life, but indeed, as an adult, I realize that the rest of my education could not have continued effectively without the lesson Mrs. Stark taught me.    She was a lovely teacher, full of love and nurturing energy; never harsh and always with a vile of smelling salts to keep herself from fainting. We parted with a fond farewell, her contract to teach me a specific task accomplished and the eight year old me in love with 8 x 9 = 72.

Once we are no longer in the academic environment, the teachers are not so obvious. But isn't it possible that we are all teachers? And the best way to figure out who YOUR teachers are is to reflect on those people in your life for whom you have felt the most emotion for, those people who have infuriated you, or broken your heart, or killed your father or healed your wound. Those are your teachers and even though you may not like or even recognize the lesson, I always ask myself when my emotions are fully on board with someone, "What is the lesson here?".

Scary Now

Now that I've told a few trusted friends about this blog I'm scared to death of hanging out here in cyberspace and y'all going, "she has finally lost her mind". Judge me not, my mind is usually within easy walking distance!

Virgo Galaxy

In the New York Times today:

"In a telescope or in ordinary pictures that capture a cosmic instant, the 2,000 or so galaxies of the Virgo cluster glow like pearly city-states, isolated and smug agglomerations of starlight. But astronomers know these galaxies are really buzzing about like bees confined by gravity in a hive some 10 million light-years across, careering back and forth at 500 miles a second, banging into one another and splashing stars and gas across space."

Funny, this seems to match the personality traits of myself and many Virgos I know. I seem to career around between my intense need for isolation juxtaposed against the thrilling vibration of a humming community of like-minded pearly and smug stars, sometimes crashing into a slower moving Aries that stumbled into the wrong hive.

I am however, attempting to temper that tendencey to come on strong, do some damage and move on out; my lesson learned and knowledge stowed under the belt, unconscious of the blinding and disorienting cloud of dust I leave behind. Truly, I have been a force of nature all of my life and now it is my intention to be a force of Divine Intention.

My Son Jesse

Ten days ago I said to my son Jesse, "It is my intention to experience our relationship without anger." He said, "I'd like that too." I haven't gotten angry at him since. It is such a releif to not experience the tension that has been so prevalent in our 11 year relationship. I recognize that I have talked way too much in the past 11 years and not listened nearly enough. I am so very grateful for the new awareness.

We are Mirrors for One Another

And since you know you cannot see yourself,
so well as by reflection, I, your glass,
will modestly discover to yourself,
that of yourself which you yet know not of.


William Shakespeare

Soul Blueprint

At the tender age of five or so, I had a mystical experience that on the symbolic level "opened up" my world for me. My sister and I shared a bedroom, two twin beds with a chest of drawers between them. I grew up in Santa Cruz, CA and at the time of the experience, my mother, brother, sister and I were living in a huge old Victorian house. I've often wondered what a family so small was doing in a house so large on "Plum Street".

One night I woke up and the walls in the house had disappeared. I could see through the entire house. When I woke up in the morning, the chest of drawers was no longer against the wall, but turned toward me, blocking my view of my sister. Although the two events could be interpreted as dreams, the memory of this has never felt like a dream. In hindsight, I think this was my first experience as a mystic who can see through the veil of what appears to be "reality". Every night this week, waking up many times during the night, I get the sense that the universe has opened up to me and that the walls of reality have retreated a little more. When it first happened a week ago after the first day of Dana How's workshop, I was a little frightend by the vast expanse before me, but now it doesn't scare me. I think I've reached a new level of consciousness that allows me to go deeper into the world behind my eyes.

And speaking of the world behind my eyes, it is overwhelming sometimes the amount of stimulation we are bombarded with in our culture. For me, today, just the 94 shades of green outside the window is more than enough stimulation! Add the sound of the CPU and the keys clicking on the keyboard, the blower of the a/c unit, the television on two rooms away, and solar chimes tinkling. That's about all I can handle at 8:02am on a Saturday!

Thank you to Elaine McFerron of the Writers Studio for inspiring me to create this Blog. Her website is: www.thewritersstudio.us

Above is my Yoga Chakra Necklace, featured on my website, www.conniehannajewels.com. I dreamt of rhinestone chakra colors all last night. Everytime I woke up, there were the seven chakra crystal colors beating a path around my brain.

I was fortunate enough, in 1989 to be handed a book with the instructions, "just hold on to it until you're ready". In 1991, I tucked the little tome into my jacket pocket to read while riding the NYC subway system. The book was Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. The book became my bible, the subway car my church and the wisdom contained within the experience an inspiration to define, in specific language and images, just what I wanted to manifest in my life. I have Mimi Eisman to thank for putting that experience into my hands at a time that I wasn't ready.

In 1991 I was living in a basement apartment with my husband Chris, in Park Slope just off the park on 6th street. I was a budding jewelry designer, cutting my teeth in the world's most competitive market at outdoor flea markets, street fairs and art shows. It took guts, it took patience and it took tenacity to not be intimidated by all the other jewerly designers trying to do the same thing I was doing. I paid my dues, standing for eight hours in 30 degree weather, selling two to three hundred dollars worth of jewelry that would be our cash to get us through to the next week. No matter what my sales, we'd always go out for a nice dinner on Sunday night and toast my success, in whatever form it took that day.

Donna Karan was a VERY big time designer in NY in those days and I decided that that's where I wanted to be. Because I didn't get too specific with the image, I had no way of knowing that landing at DKNY was going to look like getting my foot in the door with a sales executive who set me up in the coffee room on the 7th floor where I sold most of the inventory in my sample case to the sales staff. They were so supportive, so thrilled to see something new and different and unique. I was a very happy girl when I left there that day.

That particular success made me realize that I was truly capable of visualizing just about anything that I wanted and getting it, even though I was living in a two room apartment and literally working in the bathroom with my beads stored on the top of the dryer! It was at that point in my life that I did my first surrender to Divine Will. God said, "you make the jewelry, I'll take care of the rest". So that's what I've done. And it's been fourteen years of making a wagon load of jewelry with these two hands. 1000's of earrings...1000's of necklaces and bracelets, I've literally created treasure troves and jewelry. When I see it all collected in my minds eyes, the output is overwhelming.

Are we the dreamer or the dreamed?

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.

Mahatma Gandhi

I was born 47 years ago. If my understanding of "time" is accurate, that moment is still occuring because there is no such thing as time, just layer upon layer of infinite moments spinning around the nucleus of what I perceive to be "my life". Time, apparently, is a construct of the human mind and has no actual basis in reality. Time is an illusion humanity created once they learned how to count. If I suspend my beleif that time is actually "passing" then I am no longer attached to the concept that life begins and ends or that aging is a natural fact of "life".

There is an infinite world that we are each capable of creating behind our eyes. I find myself closing my eyes more and when I do there is a vast universe available that has nothing to do with the tile on this table, the chair under my butt or the shoes on my feet. The universe behind my eyes is weightless and my mind and spirit are free to travel where they feel compelled to go, where the energy of my loving heart can be experienced by others as healing.