I seem caught in the ecstasey of systems. The ones which create our reality, and the ones we create to support our own lives. The reality one blows me away. The order of our universe seems so Divine to me that it brings me to tears. I view the small thumbnail of the new moon with a bright star nearby and I'm struck just like I am when I become aware of how many colors there are as I view a sunset. I look out of my window to see the recently leafed trees that create a forest of awe and depth and I'm in love. I see a robin outside building her nest in some crazy place with such determination, and I'm baffled. Then someone sends me an e mail that's a series of photographs showing the amazing beauty of waves and I sit and cry. What an amazing amount of beauty created by all these divine systems of nature.
Because my work is about creating environments for clients, I begin to see how we as creative beings, are given the gift of direction for our on lives from this reality and I wonder. What do we create to support our living? How do we bring order to our environment to create beauty, power, flow and harmony? And do we?
It is magnificent when we do create a space no matter how big or how small that supports our journey, our living, our movement from task to task. It also, is, a wonder when those systems within our space feel good, work profoundly, are beautiful and support us daily. Yes, I'm really bringing this down to the miniscule. Are our books where we can access them? And does their presence look powerful as well as establish an efficient library? When we awaken, sit to read, cook, or even prepare to leave our home, are all of those moments easy, sacred, fun, efficient?
I'm going to use an example which really brings it down to the mundane. I have a friend who has decided she likes her hair syle better when she has more wave and lift. In order to get this effect her best method seems to be using rollers that heat-up. "It's a real giant effort," she said, "so I've given it up.
Well we all know how important it is to feel good about our appearance, to walk out that door feeling all put-together. I saw her problem. She had no system to add hot rollers to her hair routine. We examined her dresser for I knew easy access to this appliance would solve her problem. I found it! There were things in her vanity drawers that were way far removed from helping her in the moment of oblutions. We moved these items to other less vital places to be stored and moved the hot rollers for very easy access. Now as she dries her hair she can have her curlers heating up without even moving them from the drawer. There's a plug nearby which helped us decide the placement, and when she's done drying, the rollers are ready. She rolls up her hair (She said it takes her 6 minutes, ) and she is coiffed to her comfort level supported by the system that makes it a joy and EASY. The the ugly appliance is stored in a drawer never having to move.
This may offend some that I've brought this thesis to such a mundane place, but it's what I believe. Systems make life easy, and they can be created in ways that keep our spaces beautiful and ordered, like keeping a daily calendar, creating good closet systems, supporting our food preparation, even knowing always where we'll find our keys. Hooray for systems! To create them takes decluttering, awareness of priorities, and honest support of our desires to make things happen. And they help life, our life, our peace, and our ability to get our there and make something new possibilities in the world. Long live healthy systems, in our universe as well as in our sacred space.
Amen!
I was in a gift shop yesterday, and came upon a most enchanting small book by Douglas Wood, titled Things Trees Know. I'd never encountered Douglas before. Leafing through his book I noticed several more authored by him. I loved them all and purchased three.
Just to encourage you to look for Douglas, I'm going to quote a few of his pages:
It's simple: If you're living, you're growing.
If you're growing, you're living.
Want green and living thoughts!
Stand in a green and living wood.
Go ahead, get big!
Grow where you're planted
Thank you Douglas. My first book of yours is going to my daughter. And I know I'll buy more.
God bless you!
Denny D.
Just to encourage you to look for Douglas, I'm going to quote a few of his pages:
It's simple: If you're living, you're growing.
If you're growing, you're living.
Want green and living thoughts!
Stand in a green and living wood.
Go ahead, get big!
Grow where you're planted
Thank you Douglas. My first book of yours is going to my daughter. And I know I'll buy more.
God bless you!
Denny D.
Life just keeps getting better and fuller! This blog tonight is me emptying it all. Hope there's something for you to grab onto in your read.
You will be sent back to your e mail just to confirm. Anyway, this networking has me walking around with flyers, gathering e mail addresses, begging, informing, thanking. It's a wonderful animal that is causing quite a stretch in me!
I am mentoring several designers and find this work so fulfilling, so adding it to my website to expand the audience has me very excited.
Is that enough? Whew! I feel better having emptied all that. On to the next. And in the meantime, I'd love to hear what you're doing. Write to me at www.dennydaikeler.com and I'll publish it. And before I close, did you know that Fort Hood is helping rehabilitate traumatized soldiers with yoga, work on the chakras and meditation. That may be the greatest news of all.
Blessings, Denny
- Just returned from four days in the Catskills where I visited the beautiful acerage and new home of Cosm, the project of Alex and Allyson Grey. I continue to be blown away by their courage, their creativity and their vision not to mention the people they gather round them. Was struck by how wonderful it is to sit in circle, eat in community, dance with abandon until 2 AM, gaze at amazing visionary art, drum, share, live and laugh with like-minded people. I can't do this all the time, but to return to it for a time with intention is blessed. If you'd like to see more, visit www.cosm.com
- The contest continues for The Next Top Spiritual Author. The networking I'm doing to see if I can end up in the top 250 (!) entries and be published far exceeds any networking I've ever done. What an amazing ability to develop and understand. If you haven't voted yet, and would like to cast one for me visit
You will be sent back to your e mail just to confirm. Anyway, this networking has me walking around with flyers, gathering e mail addresses, begging, informing, thanking. It's a wonderful animal that is causing quite a stretch in me!
- Because of my new book and the way my business is turning or transofmring to include more of working from within whether on a home, on your life, or on yourself I am redesigning my website! That alone takes a great deal of thought and effort. Since the creation of my first website, so much has changed. One thing I am most excited about aside from presenting my new book, is a course for designers that can be downloaded. It will include footage from a very wonderful workshop I put together when a designer from Oregon announced she was traveling to the east to meet with me and hear more. Probably the spontaneous response to that decision made the workshop far more visionary and personal than anything I would have designed with lots of thought time.
I am mentoring several designers and find this work so fulfilling, so adding it to my website to expand the audience has me very excited.
- Last, and far from least is the work I am continuing with Common Ground Fellowship, www.commongroundfellowship.com This is a very diverse, multicultural group of people that is choosing to form community and work for a higher good. We meet one Sunday a month at The Cynwyd Club, in Bala Cynwyd. Our music, our message, and our persistence is adding great spiritual dimension to my life. We are celebrating six years this Sunday with Jonathan Granoff as our speaker before he's off to the U.N. for more deliberation and decision-making. You might want to attend. It's 3:00 meditation, 3:30 the celebration.
Is that enough? Whew! I feel better having emptied all that. On to the next. And in the meantime, I'd love to hear what you're doing. Write to me at www.dennydaikeler.com and I'll publish it. And before I close, did you know that Fort Hood is helping rehabilitate traumatized soldiers with yoga, work on the chakras and meditation. That may be the greatest news of all.
Blessings, Denny
What an amazing life. You spend years and years, learning, digesting, integrating. And then you've taken in so much that you've grown a thesis. You decide you need to write it down. So you enter the world of writing, rewriting, rereading, rewriting! On and on. Then you finsih something you call "a book." And you find you've only just begun! You love the book, but getting an agent, a publisher, and others to even want to read the book, let alone support it, is as challenging as all those years of beginning!
But what an amazing growth. I mean to decide that you have something to say (you hope,) and then how you're going to say it, and then coming up with another perspective that needs a rewrite is really just like living, isn't it? I mean you decide who you think you are, and you take baby steps, and then more steps, and then it works, and then you get a new idea of who you are or what you believe, and you have to turn a corner, or move, or quit a job or, or, or. One thing all of this living, OR writing does though, is keeps one on a path to being conscious about whatever it is they're exploring? LOL!
The ups and downs, reevaluation, contemplation, and almost self destruction that I've gone through in the process of writing my first book, and now my second, has gifted me with a process that I had no idea would grow me up. I thought I was already grown up. I didn't have a clue.
So anyway, my second book is complete, and I'm standing on the threshold of the second part, that of publishing. This book differs from my first in some way, so it needs a different publisher and therefore a different agent. Where to start is certainly the biggest question up.
So along comes a contest, Next Top Author, for "Spiritual" books (aren't all books spiritual ?)
and it appears as a beautiful door into creating the process of how to get published again, getting some attention, entering a network. All of this is to ask you to now vote for me in this contest! But not really all. I am truly in awe of this dynamic in life, my life anyway. And craizness of all craziness, I've got a new idea, a new book, it started in my head yesterday! Life just keeps getting juicier.
Please vote for me in this wonderful contest. A description of the book etc. is on the profile where you'll vote. Read it and then decide if I deserve your vote or if the book resonates with you:
www.nexttopauthor.com/profile.cfm?aid-1226
Thank you!
But what an amazing growth. I mean to decide that you have something to say (you hope,) and then how you're going to say it, and then coming up with another perspective that needs a rewrite is really just like living, isn't it? I mean you decide who you think you are, and you take baby steps, and then more steps, and then it works, and then you get a new idea of who you are or what you believe, and you have to turn a corner, or move, or quit a job or, or, or. One thing all of this living, OR writing does though, is keeps one on a path to being conscious about whatever it is they're exploring? LOL!
The ups and downs, reevaluation, contemplation, and almost self destruction that I've gone through in the process of writing my first book, and now my second, has gifted me with a process that I had no idea would grow me up. I thought I was already grown up. I didn't have a clue.
So anyway, my second book is complete, and I'm standing on the threshold of the second part, that of publishing. This book differs from my first in some way, so it needs a different publisher and therefore a different agent. Where to start is certainly the biggest question up.
So along comes a contest, Next Top Author, for "Spiritual" books (aren't all books spiritual ?)
and it appears as a beautiful door into creating the process of how to get published again, getting some attention, entering a network. All of this is to ask you to now vote for me in this contest! But not really all. I am truly in awe of this dynamic in life, my life anyway. And craizness of all craziness, I've got a new idea, a new book, it started in my head yesterday! Life just keeps getting juicier.
Please vote for me in this wonderful contest. A description of the book etc. is on the profile where you'll vote. Read it and then decide if I deserve your vote or if the book resonates with you:
www.nexttopauthor.com/profile.cfm?aid-1226
Thank you!
Gratitude
Gratitude, a word.
Someone says write it on your glass
And the water you drink will be pure
Someone says list everything you’re grateful for
And you will be resonating at a higher vibration
When I begin my list it really works
I begin to feel so good
I forget all the things I yearn to do
All the things I want to have
All the people I have to see
All the business awaiting me
It moves me way outside my head
And opens feelings of joy instead.
My list is long and starts with me.
And all those close and whom I love
And then I think of friends so dear
They fall into that same affectionate pull
And animals too and my bed and my home
And my work and my skills, and my safety, and my dreams
It’s amazing how long I can carry this on.
But the thing that begins to awaken in me
Is how seeing the same tree be bare and then budded, and then green and then orange
Makes me just as happy this year as last
What is that?
And how feeling sand under my feet, or the rhythm of a wave
Stirs me up every time.
And then there’s that amazing truth.
That when I connect again with someone I love
That feeling springs up that is full and joyful.
What is that?
And when I suddenly feel warmth on my shoulder from that funny yellow dot in the sky
Or hear rain on the roof
Or Beethoven’s fifth, or Clair de Lune.
What is that ? How come it always works?
Is it God? Or is it me? Or Is it you?
Or is it just that honest truth.
That it is All, it is Divine, it lives IN us, in you and me for we are one.
And I am so grateful.
I just finished viewing the award ceremony at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, where Steven Spielberg was presented with this year's medal of Liberty for his amazing index of movies expressing the indomitable human spirit. It was the final show of a list that I've seen this weekend beginning with Oprah's interview of Mike Tyson, a movie made in Quebec titled The Courage to Love, and a show featuring charities that are accomplishing wonderful opportunities for individuals in our country. I felt breathless. I wept through many of these shows, and especially during the Awards presentation.
Whoopy Goldberg topped the list of speakers as she acknowledged who Steven had to be personally to be aware and to be willing to produce such amazing epics of life. With humor she truly embodied the reality of what Steven has given us.
President Bill Clinton, was very impressive also, but the prize tonight, still went to Steven, for his expression of the importance of art in our world today. He spoke of his parents encouraging him to memorize The Declaration of Independence, or The Gettysburg Address. He spoke of how lyrical they are, and how that ingredient alone keeps us reminded of the important values they express. Beautifully he wove his presentation back to the importance to all of us of the arts, how they nourish us, inform us, and inspire us; how we must continue to support the development of art all over the world. He also, reminded us of how the arts keep us in touch with our own soul. I stand reminded and grateful to Steven for what he's done with his career, for his reminders and his gifts to life on this planet. I will stay in touch with my soul, Steven. Thank you!
I also, salute television this weekend. I have observed programming at other times which was less than wholesome, but this weekend my time in front of the tube was very sacred.
With love and gratitude,
Denny Daikeler
Whoopy Goldberg topped the list of speakers as she acknowledged who Steven had to be personally to be aware and to be willing to produce such amazing epics of life. With humor she truly embodied the reality of what Steven has given us.
President Bill Clinton, was very impressive also, but the prize tonight, still went to Steven, for his expression of the importance of art in our world today. He spoke of his parents encouraging him to memorize The Declaration of Independence, or The Gettysburg Address. He spoke of how lyrical they are, and how that ingredient alone keeps us reminded of the important values they express. Beautifully he wove his presentation back to the importance to all of us of the arts, how they nourish us, inform us, and inspire us; how we must continue to support the development of art all over the world. He also, reminded us of how the arts keep us in touch with our own soul. I stand reminded and grateful to Steven for what he's done with his career, for his reminders and his gifts to life on this planet. I will stay in touch with my soul, Steven. Thank you!
I also, salute television this weekend. I have observed programming at other times which was less than wholesome, but this weekend my time in front of the tube was very sacred.
With love and gratitude,
Denny Daikeler
It's Thursday. I've had lots of work with organizing space with clients this month. It makes sense as it's September; time to leave the summer behind and get serious. At least a little more serious!
There's lots of yearning for beauty in all my work, but underneath is such a yearning to be able to move through life and one's home environment with ease, comfort and wholeness.
It is truly amazing how NOT having the home created to now support the life that wants to happen is deadly. Wanting to move into a project, to create social get togethers, or even live easily, things need to be "set up." If every movement forward involves a hunt for, a clearing of, or a distraction, the life is chaotic.
I'm telling my clients that the first step is being sure all appliances, systems, and utilities are working and in good repair. The second is to setup all systems (laundry, food, relaxing, dressing and grooming, so you know that they have a designated space and all the tools needed to do the job are there. The third is clearing the space of everything that has nothing to do with the present life, every day (more popularly known as decluttering.) All of these steps are so important, but that third is paramount. Many of this week's projects were filled with reducing storage in the "vital" areas of the home, to only house the minimum needed for the next month! Where does the rest go? The answer is to some space removed that is also organized and accessible. (And that space needs to be orderly enough also, to support the life.)
Careful examination of what you need in this season of your life to make you comfortable, effective, happy and inspired will assist all of the above. And don't forget, it varies with every one of us. You wouldn't care one hang for the little white polar bear sitting next to my bathroom soapdish, but I would miss him deeply.
Let's organize, synthesize, and put in place exactly what turns us on. Then our new season can happen powerfully and beautifully.
Blessings to you, your space, and your willingness to "Let Go" and "Create New."
There's lots of yearning for beauty in all my work, but underneath is such a yearning to be able to move through life and one's home environment with ease, comfort and wholeness.
It is truly amazing how NOT having the home created to now support the life that wants to happen is deadly. Wanting to move into a project, to create social get togethers, or even live easily, things need to be "set up." If every movement forward involves a hunt for, a clearing of, or a distraction, the life is chaotic.
I'm telling my clients that the first step is being sure all appliances, systems, and utilities are working and in good repair. The second is to setup all systems (laundry, food, relaxing, dressing and grooming, so you know that they have a designated space and all the tools needed to do the job are there. The third is clearing the space of everything that has nothing to do with the present life, every day (more popularly known as decluttering.) All of these steps are so important, but that third is paramount. Many of this week's projects were filled with reducing storage in the "vital" areas of the home, to only house the minimum needed for the next month! Where does the rest go? The answer is to some space removed that is also organized and accessible. (And that space needs to be orderly enough also, to support the life.)
Careful examination of what you need in this season of your life to make you comfortable, effective, happy and inspired will assist all of the above. And don't forget, it varies with every one of us. You wouldn't care one hang for the little white polar bear sitting next to my bathroom soapdish, but I would miss him deeply.
Let's organize, synthesize, and put in place exactly what turns us on. Then our new season can happen powerfully and beautifully.
Blessings to you, your space, and your willingness to "Let Go" and "Create New."
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