Yet when we seek the truth in this or any other saying for ourselves we can actually find our own blockages, connect with our beliefs and then bring them in to alignment with where we are currently in our life.

I get all excited about New Years! It may be the Scorpio in me, but I love transformation, new vibrant energy and a ‘clean slate.’ Yet, we are human BE-ings after-all and we do have our human ways… it is human to fall back to the old way; the habitual method of doing something while we are evolving. The important thing to remember is that each time you fall down, you get up again! That is how we all learned to walk and we did experience a few bumps ‘n bruises along with all those pleasures of crawling, walking then running, and even jogging for those more adventurous and able!

One of my habits is keeping a “Miracle Box’ which is a box where I enter my wishes, desires; yes, and even my lottery tickets in to. It is a beautiful wooden box and on the inside it’s covered with pink heart-shaped post-it’s saying ‘thank you’ as my message of gratitude to the Universe. I went to “clutter clear’ it the other day as I do each year at this time and found a note from back in 2007 with a long list of qualities that I wanted to bring in to my life. I had kept that particular list in the box as a few items were still ‘missing.’ I reached in, removed it and the box was empty. I sat there and just looked into the hollow space for a few moments and slowly began to smile. I realized it felt GREAT! I blew a few dust bunnies from the corners and wondered what if I just left it this way? Empty? Not asking for anything, now THAT would be different, that would be ‘change,’ that would be ‘evolving’ and I felt super excited at all the possibilities… ahhh, the unknown… the vastness out there waiting for me!

Perhaps you are way ahead of me in your search for enlightenment, empowerment and personal growth, right by my side or at another point in your journey; to me, this is all exciting… whether you are new to learning about Vision Boards, Soul Collages and Miracles Boxes for the first time or have been doing it for years; there is always opportunity to create change, to transform and to evolve.

You may set New Year’s Resolutions or be ready for Real SOUL-utions; it is up to you of course. How are they different? In a resolution, one resolves to make a change and sets out with or sometimes even without a realistic, achievable, measurable, long or short term goal… has or maybe does not have an action plan; a deadline, an accountability factor and usually tends to go full force soon running out of gusto leaving themselves feeling defeated.

A Real SOUL-ution is where one takes the time to follow a proven process to explore deep within, make a commitment to themselves that will be kept (no matter what size, but beginning with what works for them) learns about the art and power of intention, discovers thru daily lessons, affirmations and guided meditations tools that last an entire lifetime; tools that empower you in all areas of life, while connecting with you with your passions, discovering your purpose while having fun with creative projects exploring the art and science of manifesting. All this while being gentle on yourself, knowing who you are is enough and infusing your soul with love and acceptance.

There is something that lights up in my soul when I see a spark go off in a person; a little ‘ah-ha’ of recognition that brings them some knowing, realizing, growing, loving and just plain Spiritual evolving!

My ‘Miracle Box’ may remain ‘empty’ for this coming year as a trial to myself to evolve from old habits, invite the Universe to bring in things I may never even have considered and to challenge even a good habit once in a while!

My challenge to you is find one old habit that you are willing to explore, create some transformation and “glow for it!”

Happy New Year 2012 to you all!!! May your life be filled with love, peace, harmony, happiness, gratitude, health, grace and even more than you could ever desire!

In luminescence and Love,

Kelly

Kelly Chamchuk is a certified Soul Coach offering programs, workshops, retreats, inspirational products and Interior Alignment Consultations – all designed to help you ALIGN*CONNECT*EVOLVE

©Kelly Chamchuk 2011 | www.lumasoul.com | kelly@lumasoul.com

Can one really clear clutter during this mind boggling time of activity; with all the meeting, greeting, eating, shopping, decorating, baking, giving, and maybe even gratefully receiving too? Oh, and did I even mention clearing some negative thoughts, stagnant emotions and those non-serving beliefs? Whew!   Well YES!!! Clutter clearing during December can simplify this time of your life, bring focus to what is truly important to you, and even set you up for wonder-filled year to come.   Take a moment to reconnect with what this ‘time’ really means to you and create the feelings to go with it. Just because everyone else’s head is spinning does not mean yours has to! There. It IS that simple and Santa will not put you on his naughty list!   What is this time about for YOU and how are you choosing to celebrate it? With family and friends, in a peace filled loving moment holding candles at the top of a snowy mountain? Near the Oceanside walking the dogs greeting the others out doing the same? Volunteering for others less fortunate? Being secret Santa to those who really need something and never telling anyone? Maybe something traditional, something your family has trusted in for generations, the tried and true?  Perhaps you are looking to do something new…   Whatever is going on in your life, ‘commitments’ and ‘obligations’ aside; how you feel while doing it is up to YOU. Set some clear intentions and go for it! Be awareof your thoughts and mindful of the emotions as they steer you and guide you to where your heart wants to be!

WHEN IT COMES TO TIME…

Photo by Kelly Chamchuk

When all is said and done, it is not the ‘things’ you purchased or that the tablecloth was perfectly pressed that people remember; it’s the TIME you spent with them, the JOY you brought to their life, and the LOVE that is shared. Clutter clearing creates sacred space for that.

• Choose your time wisely and please remember those who may not have much time left, you never really know who they are. Love everyone!
• Consider joining a baking circle with friends or purchase your homemade goodies from a local Farmers Market, do we really need all those sweets? How much is enough?  Stick ‘em in the freezer. Done.
• Edit your contact lists; are these people in your life or do you feel obligated to keep in contact? Do they keep in touch with you or is the effort a ‘one-way’ street? People can be clutter too, especially toxic ones.
• Many people have gone to the newsletter or e-mail format for keeping in touch however a special handwritten card for people who mean something says so much, you already know who they are!
• If it is too late to do your ‘editing’ this year, each month take one section of your contact list and by next year, it will be ready. If you don’t have a computerized system, create one in the same manner. It is okay to print the mailing labels; the message inside should be handwritten though, including a personal note especially if sent with a generic letter.
• Hire a student or virtual assistant for the database or paperwork, then do what you love instead.
• Limit your activities; you do not have to attend them all, unless you want to of course! You choose! Become friends with the words “Thank you so much, I’d love to however…”
• Know when to hire a driving service to save time, move friends, family and yourself safely and yes, even save money, maybe life’s, especially if there are ‘spirits’ involved!
• Take advantage of the super sales, save $$ and create a suitable gift cupboard for upcoming celebrations in the New Near. Consider shelf life, storage space, fashion trends and purchase generic gifts that anybody would love!
• Learn to see things differently; some items such as beautiful scarfs, unique containers, or flowers serve as the gift & gift-wrapping at the same time!
• Give the gift of TIME; create coupons to spend with the people you love, doing things you enjoy!

TIPS ON DECORATIONS…   

As you go through your decorations, take time to decide which ones personally mean something, if you don’t loveit, loose it. Invite the family to get involved, put some music on, grab a bevy and IN-JOY the process.

• Use a decoration instead of a bow on a gift, bottle or bag. Try wrapping using plain brown paper or even the newspaper, tie with raffia or nice ribbon, insert a fresh clipping from an Evergreen Tree; the gift looks awesome, smells great and is very ‘Green!’
• Trade ornaments with friends and their friends at a Vintage Tea Party
• Donate quality re-useable ornaments, lights, faux trees, to families that are in need through various community programs
• Create ‘starter boxes’ for family members soon to be leaving home and going out on their own
• If ‘downsizing,’ take all your true treasures and incorporate them into a wreath or two that you can display with love. Give the remainders to family and friends or donate them to a favorite Charlie Brown Tree.
• In your ‘Golden Years?’ Gift your vintage pieces to those who will appreciate the stories and memories that come from your heart while you are here to enjoy the smiles and appreciation on their faces.
• Just starting out? Consider using live décor that will remain throughout the year such as bamboo and hang just one awesome ornament from it.
• Bring in times from nature, moss in a bowl with a few decorative balls, pine cones stacked in an empty vase, fresh branches from your local market and then recycle back to nature afterwards in a compost!
• Purchase live potted trees that will be replanted and decorate with objects from nature or string popcorn or other edibles such as dried cranberries.
• If your décor is up and looking absolutely gorgeous already, congratulations!!! Perhaps save this article and consider these options as you are taking them down in preparation for next year. It’s never to late to de-clutter your life and create sacred space for time, love and newness to arrive.

Focus on your intentions and what you want to bring in to your life, keep those feelings vibrant and make them real! Be clear on what you really want, because we create what we think. I will be thinking love, peace and abundance for all.

Kelly Chamchuk is a certified Soul Coach and Interior Alignment Practitioner offering programs, workshops, retreats & guided meditation services – one-on-one, in groups and online, plus produces products and that help you ALIGN*CONNECT*EVOLVE

©Kelly Chamchuk 2011 | www.lumasoul.com | kelly@lumasoul.com

From the rice fields to the busy streets, the store fronts with the cheery shopkeepers, they all have embraced me. Or is it I that have embraced them? Is it the strangers that come up to me ask me if I remember them? How can I feel more at home here that I do at home?

How can I feel more at peace here and more connected here yet so very far from home and all I have to do is look up to the night sky and the stars and their formations and feel the familiarity or walk the broken sidewalks and sense I could do it with my eyes closed? How come the evening chirp, make that the evening squeal of the crickets hits my heart more like song and in the daytime, especially early in the morning the dragonflies as they dance thru the misty skies remind me… of something; of somewhere, of sometime past?

The sun beats down on my skin and my body soaks it all up, it feeds me for I know that I am born of the sun but I do not know how I know. Even the rain dances here. Starting off slow and sweet giving you only one moment before it opens up its heart and dumps its love on the land. The drops hit so hard they jump for joy before settling down once again into the flow. They are the wise ones for they do not know resistance, they fall, they flow; they do not question where or why they are going, they just go. They know no fear, only purpose.

Was my fear really of coming to Bali and travelling alone? My soul already knows the answer; my soul knows only the truth. The fear I held was one of realignment with my Spirit, fear of connection to what I hold as sacred and fear of an intensely powerful transformation.

There is something in me that has now been completed; something for which there are no human words to describe except a knowing, a believing, a trusting that what I feel is true. Something mystical yet authentic and so genuine.

A death has occurred in me yet I feel no sadness for there also has been a birth in me and for that I celebrate. Both will remain to dance together in my womb, twins, never to be separated again. The dark and light, the sad and the happy, it is the true ongoing balance of the yin and the yang.

Wholeness, completion and fresh beginnings forever dancing; frolicking in the waves we call time. This is my Bali. Welcome home.

- Kelly Chamchuk

If I don’t have gratitude, how do I get it?

Start with the simple things in life, like air. When I sat watching my Dad in the hospital taking his last breaths with great difficultly, I became so incredibly grateful for air, for the ability to breathe clearly. Then for water, and the ability to swallow water that I simply poured from a tap, how many people can’t do this I wondered as I sat in a very uncomfortable chair in a chilly hospital room. Air and water. I felt so simply grateful.

Now I have gratitude, how do I get more?

The night was going to be a long one but I was driven to write and ran down to the car to grab my journal and wrote long and hard about being grateful for air, from our first breath at birth, to coming up for air when swimming or even after a long kiss and the list went on and on. And water, I thought about that too… I love and am grateful for water, just think about what it does for us daily and for the planet too. Pick something, anything, make a list. Feel it. Appreciate it, or someone, that is being grateful.

What about being grateful for the not so ‘good’ things?

Good and bad are just labels, so BE grateful for everything! I know, how can one be grateful when a loved one dies? Tears; I can be grateful I have tears to shed the grief and sleep to ease the pain and that I can tremble and survive without eating, yes, I CAN be grateful for that. There are people who look after certain things, I CAN be grateful for that. A strong cup of coffee served with kindness, a gift from a brother in remembrance, kind words fading in and out from strangers, yes grateful. I can concentrate on the feeling of being grateful to ease my pain. Life, I can be grateful for my life.

So what is gratitude really?

Be it an idea, virtue, state, emotion or attitude; gratitude is a gift you can add to your daily life just by focusing on the positive of any given situation at any time. You can give the gift of gratitude, you can receive the gift of gratitude; or you can choose to live and conduct your day in a blissfully grateful manner. Even when it may seem that all hope is gone, you can still ‘find’ gratitude. Find it in the air you breathe and the water you drink and keep the list going… although packaged in many sizes, shapes and colors; gratitude is definitely a wonderful gift that keeps on giving. Share some today!

I am a freezer, have been for a while… I do nothing! Sometimes I can’t even verbalize what I am feeling as even my voice freezes; my feelings freeze, my senses freeze, and I shut down. I get the ‘deer in the headlights’ look even as I see ‘something’ coming straight towards me.

Since I’m a lover not a fighter, fighting is not an option and deep down I know that running away is not the answer either so I just collapse, I go deep, I ‘do dark.’ I shut my eyes and make it all disappear. What really happens is that I disappear, everything else remains the same. My monkey mind takes control and out comes the hamster wheel so around and around I go until one day my heart once again speaks up and says “Hello? Remember me?”

Then from the deep dark hollow pit that I created and encouraged to swallow my self up, I must rise again; climbing… like hiking on mud in a rainstorm, grasping at the ever failing foundation with every ounce of energy I have until once again I make it out. Have I ever thought about asking for help along the way? Not really. Maybe someone could have handed me a ladder or thrown me a rope or perhaps shone their flashlight on my path just for a moment. Maybe I would have accepted their assistance? Maybe?

I know Mother Nature is always there for me, so I bask in the beauty of the stars and the moon and feel the warmth from the sun and allow her to nurture me so I connect with her often. She speaks to me and gives me important signs and signals, yet I notice something deep inside still crying. Beginning as a whisper, a little one; a gentle one, I could quiet it with a piece of chocolate or a glass of wine or two or three. It sure wants to be heard; it shows me pictures in my mind and puts songs on the radio and tells me stories in my dreams but now is screaming “You WILL hear me!”

“Who are you?” I finally asked.
“I am your soul,” she replied.
“What do you want,” I really wanted to know.
“I want to be loved by you and one other,” she stated softly.
“That’s it?” I asked wondering if it could be that easy.
“That is IT, and don’t think for a minute that it is going to be easy! There are things that
you must learn first,” she said wisely.

“Oh great,” I thought, “now what?”
She answered, “You recognize Fight, Flight and Freeze but you have yet to recognize the
most powerful healer of all – Face!”

“I cannot imagine…” I began.

She stopped me sarcastically saying “I know!” She continued with, “Everything the Universe will bring you now will be to teach you… just as it has always been, but this time – you will know of the lesson in advance. There will be many choices and we know you don’t like them either, yet you WILL make them. Do not label them with your good and bad; that is not what matters here. What matters is that you are moving forward, thawing the ice in your heart so you can get back into the joyous flow of life!”

She kept on speaking; “To be scared is to be scar-ed dear one. Each fright leaves a scar on me and on you – the physical garment the holds me. It is best for us both that you invest in your self – learn to face these things that frighten you, face these things you call fear.” She paused for only a moment then whispered, “Are you ready to be un-scared? Ask your self, if not now, when? In one week, in a month, in a year, in another lifetime? Decide when, decide now and when you are ready, let me know.”

Oh, it all sounds good on paper, I thought as I imagined myself in a year from now, two years from now and then at the end of this life. There were a lot of blank spaces that could have been filled in… “So how do I face my fears?” I bravely yet not so bravely asked the wise one.

This is what she said:

“Know that you have the WILL in you, each and every one of you is born with it. It is time to invest in your self. Know that a fear named is a fear tamed so name it dear one and make it as comical as you can; if you can laugh at it, you are half way there. Ask yourself what is the worst case scenario and if you could live with that, and knowing you, you likely have already lived with much worse, oh and in case you fear death – you have already lived through that too and look at you now! What is the best case scenario? How does that feel? Hold on to that for a few minutes, maybe just a few minutes more… Does this make it feel any less scary? Then just keep on doing this until all of this what you call fear is gone, and trust me, something better will take its place. It will be something strong, something noble and something sacred.”

The word sacred comes from the Latin word sacrum, referring to the Gods or anything in their power. Be in your power. Make the decision to FACE your fears. Live sacred.