I remember hearing from a dear spiritual teacher of mine, many years ago, that summer was the time for personal spiritual growth work.  I cannot, for the life of me, remember what the time was for any other season, so that must mean that it meant something meaningful for me. 🙂 I know that I was curious as to how that was supposed to work; at the time my young daughter was in school and summer meant that, as ‘The Mom’, my job description included scheduling her time while she was out of school for the summer holidays.  How was I supposed to concentrate on my spiritual growth when the organizing aspect of parenting was in full swing in the summertime?  At the time I assessed that since my wise and wonderful teacher didn’t have children, she may not have had the full picture as to how full summer was for parents!

Very recently I had the blessed opportunity to celebrate my daughter’s (yes, the same daughter) thirtieth birthday.  In my family ‘decade’ birthdays are always celebrated in a large way, so I cobbled together enough ‘green-backs’ and she and I took a cruise to the Caribbean.  Remembering my teacher’s wisdom, I planned on doing a lot of creative work whilst on the cruise; I mean, really, nine days at sea must mean that I would have plenty of time to create wonderful contributions for my website and newsletter!  Hah!  What I found was that I couldn’t drag myself away from communing with the wide expanse of blue water that we cruised through; it was positively mesmerizing.

Interestingly, what I found is that once I found my ‘land legs’ again, I was so much more available to sit and write and work on the creative aspect of my business of touting the benefits of conscious spiritual growth than I was before I went on vacation.  And when I think back, when I really let myself escape completely while on vacation, I come back clearer and more available to do whatever work I have on my plate.

So maybe summer’s spiritual growth work is about leaving work at home with a blessing, really letting go of what you want to create while away and relaxing into the delight of summer play.  Then the magic of clearing the air of your intuitive/creative self can ‘just’ happen within that intentional blessing and you can come back to work refreshed and enthused.  Give it a try and let me know if that perspective works for you!

I had a question posed to me recently: when I consciously set an intention, how does that manifest; what am I doing?  I mention intentional blessing in the paragraph above so I thought I would address the question here.  An intentional blessing is one that you take a moment or ten to focus completely on what you are intending.  Quite simple really…too simple for those of us who think that for intentions to have any power we have to work hard with sweat blood and tears, literally or proverbially.  One of the important things I learned from my studies with Caroline Myss was that it is important to realize that wherever we place our energy has powerful consequences, albeit unseen much of the time.  She brought up the example that if we give, say, $10.00 to saving the environment, or, however we opinionate, that is where our energy goes.  In other words wherever we place our energy, it carries weight.  So an important awareness to cultivate is to become very conscious as to what you support; is it really what you want to support?  In the context of this essay, understanding that if I intentionally bless my potential creative endeavors I know that unseen blessing is real, albeit non-literal.  It is an opportunity to solidify the knowing that manifestation has other ways of showing up than just in the physical world.  Isn’t it interesting how attached we are to manifestation being literal?  What a delight to think that by blessing my creative endeavors I don’t have to do anything on the physical plane for that intention to have an effect!