Author Archive

Today has been a fabulous day. The weather is wonderful and warm here in San Miguel de Allende. Plants have officially sprung, which has been wondrous since I’m accustomed to late springs in our high desert. There had been some trees on the property we are staying at that had lost their leaves for the winter and now they are being painted by nature. Cherry blossoms are already almost gone too! I think the jacarandas are the only blooms we won’t see because it seems that a frost got them first. It’s too bad, we were really looking forward to lavendar trees again.

My poor Charlie (my small dog) is recovering well now.  Still missing an eye, of course… Two surgeries later he still has a whole in his abdomen where I think he could have used another stitch! I’ll have my dad look at it tomorrow. But, Charlie is eating, drinking using nature’s facilities and is walking around.  He looks better and he is not leaking blood, the way he had been. His spirits are higher and he tends
to watch everywhere I go.  He knows that I stayed and protected him when he was attacked by the rot wiler several years ago and I think he knows that we came home to Santa Fe for him. Now that we’ve had him with us for a week, minus the two days he was in the hospital here for surgery #2, he is getting more comfortable. He has taken comfort in realizing that he is traveling with us.

Charlie even went with us to Jalisco. We had met some friends in December and have become very good friends. She is American & he is Mexican, which is fun because I can speak to him in Spanish and ask
him questions, like how do you say zebra in Spanish? Of course, she is great because I love having cool girlfriends. We went to his family’s ranch and stopped by and visited a tequila factory on our way. He is partnering up with the owner to create a new tequila, so the owner set a tour up for us. It was great having a private tour and learning more about the tequila-making process. The samples were just
fine too!

Sunday he is having a party, that is supposed to be a surprise but she knows, for her birthday, which we are looking forward to. We are attending a lecture on Tuesday by a Mayan Mystic named Ac Tah about
2012, who we met him last Monday. I spoke with him and liked him and his energy, so it will be good to see him again.

We have less than a week here before we start to head out for California. It has been a magical and transformational trip with many gifts. I’m grateful and enjoying our last few days.

I have always loved the idea of the Valentine’s Day holiday. Growing up it was a time of hearts, candy and Valentine cards for everyone in school. Even in High School Valentine-grams were sold as a fund raiser by some school groups. The idea: send a card and heart-shaped sucker to all your friends, your sweetie too, if you like.

As an adult, however, the function and the experience of Valentine’s Day is completely different. Valentine’s Day becomes a measure of your success at romantic love. It is a great reminder that you couldn’t get a date one day out of the year. It is a great judge of whether your company is romantic enough and whether they treat you like you are something special. Or not. It is a ruler with which to measure how much love you receive in the shapes of chocolates, roses, diamonds…. After all, if you didn’t receive a diamond, it’s not true love.

This was, at least, traditionally true. Thank goodness things seem to be changing. Now, for those of us on a spiritual path we see this holiday in a whole other light. Because we know that everything is about energy and about shifting our energy in the direction we prefer, we know that no day can measure our romantic love. We know that feelings of not being loved enough or not being romanced properly are actually only a reflection of our energy, our own love. For most of my adult life Valentine’s Day has been a celebration of love. The love you have inside, not the love that someone may give you.

As a celebration of love, I have traditionally participated and held Valentine group dinners, a chance to gather with friends, lovers, family, all. Everyone I love. Sure, receiving a rose is touching and appreciated, but sharing love and joy with many people is a far greater celebration. It becomes more festive, more energized and more grandiose.

Just ask everyone at the Jardin here in San Migule de Allende. I don’t know if all of Mexico is like this or not, but yesterday I was egged upon entering the plaza. To our great surprise the whole town seemed to be out celebrating with music, confetti-filled colored eggs, paper flowers and paper puppet clowns. Everyone was downtown: lovers, families, children and friends. Kids of all ages ran around breaking the eggs on one another, on strangers (like me!), laughing and having a great time. People sat before a concert in front of the cathedral. Families sat on a bench eating fresh corn. Everyone seemed to have received a balloon, clown or paper flower. Everyone was laughing and celebrating. Now that is what Valentine’s Day is really all about when you are on a spiritual path: it is about celebrating Love and Life, with all.

Love & Light, Kalyn

~~~

Kristopher & Kalyn Raphael, or K2, have been spiritual life coaches for ten years. They work directly with people taking them on journeys, cruises, leading classes on the internet and coaching groups. They are both published authors and are the founders of The Golden Flow(TM)system of accelerated enlightenment and The Toltec Mystery School. Follow Kalyn’s blog by subscribing at KalynRaphael.com/blog

Spinning Wheels

(short story about crossroads & probabilites)

She looked at him sadly. He had saved her, in his own way by proposing marriage, allowing her to stay in the country and have a place to belong, which she’d never truly had.

He looked up at her, with a deepness that hurt. She had saved him, in her own way, by bringing a special love he had never known into his life.

And yet now, when she looked at him all she saw were the deep gashes left behind by a tiger that had shred him apart. Or was she the one who had been shredded up? She couldn’t tell. Her heart was so heavy and felt each of those gashes so deeply that she couldn’t see the physical state of either of them, but the pain… the pain she felt ran through every valley and crevice of those deep wounds.

She focused on him, forcing her eyes to see what was right before her instead of pain. He was blank, numb and only half alive. He processed the scene slowly because it cost him so much just to stay present in his experience. He couldn’t take the pain and the truth of what their lives had become anymore.

The years passed. Nothing changed, yet everything was lost. They had worked through their destructive fighting and had found a way to stay out of each others way. They had found a way not to rip each other up, making the reoccurring arguments half as intense. He thought this meant that things had smoothed out. As he walked down the alley a man sitting up against a dumpster caught his eye. Then he saw the needle on the ground.

Like a flash of lighting recognition struck him. Looking at this heroine addict strung out, he saw himself sitting there. He recognized the numb look on his face that came from checking out. He recognized the betrayal to himself of his addiction to her approval. He recognized the punished feeling bestowed upon him by a cruel god who would allow such misery, shame and humiliation. For the first time in a long time he felt the pain of knowing that he had brought this on himself by allowing himself to become addicted to this dysfunctional love. He had left his easy-going, joyful and creative self behind. Far behind.

It was too late to look back, he thought to himself. Looking at the drug addict he now recognized the same desire to have a quick death instead of drawing out this hell he called life.

Death? Death? The thought shook him. It brought him back to the room where she was yelling at him, again, saying that he never listens to her. This had to be an exaggerated daydream, he said to himself with hope. Just because we fight it can’t lead me to praying for my own death- his thought was interrupted by her escalating anger. She was beginning to hit the pillows. She is not a violent person, and yet she’s going from screaming to physically expressing her anger again. I’m not a drug addict, but I’m getting numb again. Is this really what I want for my life? Is this who I want to be?

Suddenly she stopped, frozen, as if a ghost had walked in the room. It was as though he had been possessed because his glossed-over eyes recovered their color. His limp body stood up straight and looked larger. And, he looked straight at her. Was he going to begin disparaging her and calling her names? No. He was calm, rather calm.

He spoke “For the first time in a long time,” he began, “I can see that we are not coming from love. We are not taking love into account. We haven’t had love present in ourselves or in our marriage for more time than I care to recall.

“For the first time in my life, I want to do something for myself out of love. I want to do something for you out of love. We tried saving each other, thinking it was loving, but we hadn’t saved ourselves. We began fighting to be loved by the other without loving ourselves or the other. We began fighting more and more. We have both left our beautiful, joyous and divine selves behind in those fights. In those moments when we chose to demand that we be loved instead of being loving.

For a moment his voice quieted with the wave of sadness that his own words brought to him. For a moment he looked down, wondering what he would say now, wondering what he needed to do.

He raised his head and looked in her eyes again. “I now choose love. We have been fighting for so long that I feel as though that is the only way we know to relate. Even when we try to change things we can’t seem to. It feels the way it did the other day when we drove through the mud and got stuck. The more I tried to drive on through, the more the wheels would spin and the more stuck we became. We couldn’t change the fact that we were stuck and we had to get towed to another road without mud. We need to have lives without mud.

“It is time to get out of the stuck car.” He spoke with sadness and yet, a sense of relief came over him that he was doing the loving thing.

“I know. My heart is so heavy and I love you so much,” she replied, “but I feel like all there is between us is pain and hurt. That is not who I am. I can’t imagine not being with you, and the thought of it hurts. But you are right. We have not had love in our hearts for some time. We have only had anger at not feeling loved by the other. I choose love too. I choose another road in which I am the free spirit I used to feel inside my happy heart.”

The years passed. He came out of a bar after meeting a client on a business trip. To his right he noticed an empty alley. His spirits were high because he enjoyed his work and was finding a new friend in the client. Finding new friends was nothing new to this jovial man. Life was good. On his left something caught his eye. A young man stopped at a red light on his motorcycle with a beautiful young lady holding on behind him. The couple looked like they were having a wonderful time, and he recognized that feeling, that love.

Then he was struck. He had to squeeze his eyes and lean his head forward again to be certain. Was that the drug addict he had seen in that daydream all those years ago? No. It couldn’t be, could it?

That reminded him, he had received an email from his ex-wife. It was great that they had been able to develop a friendship after everything. He would reply to her message and tell her that he was doing very well. Life is good, he thought. And I’m in love. He headed down the street to meet his dinner date, the love of his life.

Part Four:

Looking Back

So, today, on the day of the anniversary of my birth, I had gratitude. I talked with a friend and business partner who I’d been trying to catch on the phone for a couple weeks and who caught me during the only five minutes I was online all week, and I was grateful. I hugged my husband and my daughter and told my dad and his wife how grateful I am to be here traveling with them all. I bought a small gift for some girlfriends who I will see in a few weeks and I was grateful to have fun doing so. I loved my last morning in Mérida, where we had breakfast and then walked downtown. We found a new church whose energy was refreshing and revitalizing, and I prayed about my gratitude.

Now on the plane I am thinking about the many gifts and the whispered secrets life has generously given me; I think about the pelican, about the magical places I’ve seen, the new adventures that will come to me because of this trip and I’m grateful. I’m grateful that I know.

I’m grateful to be in my Golden Flow™ and to know that gratitude will keep me soaring in the wind and in my life. I know who I am, the person who allows and flows with life. I know what I want my life to be like and I know how to get there. And I know that my flow and my knowingness will continue to expand and unfold, brining me greater adventures, dreams and experiences in my life.

That is what knowingness can be like in the flow state.

I Know

Kris & I just recorded a video on don Miguel Ruiz’s Fith Agreement, so I thought I’d share more about one of the gifts that this agreement holds for me.

As old students of don Miguel’s, Kris and I used to hear him tell us all “don’t believe me, don’t believe anyone else and don’t believe your self”.  There are many aspects to this agreement, but don Miguel primarily meant that we shouldn’t hold beliefs because they can be limiting.

One significant point about beliefs for me is that they are not the same as something we know. In other words, we need to distinguish between what we believe and what we know.

When we know something, it isn’t a matter of information it is a matter of experience.

Knowing something does not come from the process of our mental bodies, or our minds, taking in information or even observing something, the way beliefs do. Knowingness instead comes from our experience. That encounter can come from within, like a meditation, or without, an experience. For example, people can describe freezing weather and water that freezes, turns white and comes down slowly, or snow. Even if you haven’t experienced snow you can still understand the idea of it and appreciate pictures of snow. You may even think that you’d like to make a snow man.

On the other hand, going and being in the cold, seeing the sights of the falling snow and feeling snow in your hands give you the actual experience. At that point, you know how you feel about the snow, you know what it is like and you know what this experience means to you.

We only know our own divinity and our own Golden Flow™ through experience. You may recall an experience similar to your first seeing snow or experiencing nature. For many people this can be a divine and spiritual experience.

This is because they are in that place of knowingness, as opposed to knowledge, beliefs or ideas. Be certain to allow yourself plenty of experiences, allowing yourself to know.

~~~

Kristopher & Kalyn Raphael, or K2, have been spiritual life coaches for ten years. They work directly with people taking them on journeys, cruises, leading classes on the internet and coaching groups. They are both published authors and are the founders of The Golden Flow(TM)system of accelerated enlightenment and The Toltec Mystery School. Follow Kalyn’s blog by subscribing at KalynRaphael.com/blog