February is a month filled with sweetness. We are again happily reminded to celebrate love in its many forms as people focus attention on Valentine’s Day and the affection they feel for special people in their lives.

This year I’ve been gifting tokens of my love with homemade chocolates and my family is grooving on it. It’s surprising how easy and fun it is to make a healthful treat. I use only four organic ingredients: maple syrup, cocoa powder, butter and sea salt. The danger is that John and I find our thoughts drifting to the contents of my fridge a little too often.

Speaking of a drifting mind, this month we encourage you to find a meditation practice that helps you to be present in here-and-now moments via April Thompson’s “Meditation that Works: Tips for Finding the Right Practice.” Mindful awareness of our core needs and listening for true answers can help us intelligently deal with the obstacles we face.

We also especially enjoyed the positive and promising message contained in her other article, “Rising Above Adversity.” Here she shares real-life examples illustrating that how we manage unexpected moments defines who we are becoming as well as our growing capacity to bless others and flourish.

How wonderful we feel when we opt for love in any situation and this higher vibration lifts thought out of fear-based, fight-or-flight thinking to a more spiritual level of consciousness. Life’s inevitable challenges present opportunities to cover everyone in grace as we choose to magnify and celebrate the good.

Perhaps, like us, you’re on the path of learning that we can either let life happen to us or take responsibility for every aspect and outcome of our experience, being accountable for what and who we let into our consciousness, starting with Spirit. Whichever route we take, we receive needed lessons. If the desired outcome doesn’t appear, we at least have an open door to more clearly discover what we don’t want.

Wherever we are, amid life’s twists and turns, I feel grateful that a new dawn breaks every morning, giving us the opportunity to start anew.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all! We invite you to follow your heart this month and leave you with this inspiring lyric from Love is Everywhere by John Denver:

Follow your heart like a flying stallion, Race with the sun to the edge of night. Form your truth like a gold medallion, Dance in the circle of the love and the light.

Love is everywhere, I see it, You are all that you can be, go on and be it. Life is perfect, I believe it, Come and play the game with me.

 

Wishing you all bountiful love and health,

Trina and John Voell, Publishers