Latest / The Harmony Channel / A Collage for Reflection

Transcript

A Collage for Reflection · The Harmony Channel

• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Harmony Channel.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host C. Rose.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so glad you're here for an episode about my love for diary writing.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have been writing my way through the great unknown mysteries of life as a practice of seeing what's there.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: For me, it's been helpful to pause and recognize where I have been as a way to illuminate where I am in the now moment.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today's episode is a collage of past and present writing, reflecting on the importance of reflection.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the importance of having something in this world to hold on to as the winds of change clear what is no longer needed.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I was about 8 or 9, I had a diary with a hard cover, lined pages, and a lock and key.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was my secret diary with secret thoughts written in the typical pre-teen bubble handwriting.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I no longer have that diary, I'm sure it got thrown away when I was a teenager.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm guessing the thoughts reflected were feelings about my friends and maybe even about my family.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Later, when I was in my late teens and early 20s, I kept another diary.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: A much thicker book with a blue leather cover and blank white pages that I bought at a store on Broadway in Soho.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The diary became my rock.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I used it to process feelings around the loss of my brother and found it helpful to write my sorrows, my joys, my questionings, my yearnings, my inspirations, my failings.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I pasted in it ticket stubs for art shows, movies and concerts.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I brought the diary with me to Europe and made some notes on my travels.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was spurred on to keep my own diary as I read Anaya's Nins intimate words in one of hers.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was dedicated to my book of life all the way to the very last page.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I bought a second diary, this one was thinner, with a red leather cover at the very same store.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But after graduating from college, I lost the momentum and stopped.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was busy with being a photographer and working in the industry and I grew out of the habit.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: For diary writing takes commitment and my commitments became seeing through the art full lens of the camera no longer finding interest in my feelings or the events of what I was doing.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was just focused on doing it.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: until years and decades went by, and I could no longer recognize who I was and where I had been and where I wanted to go.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was lost in the fog of not knowing myself.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then, as my healing journey began, I started again.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: first on the digital page to keep it easy and now I'm back to the paper page as I love the tactileness of my pencil and small handmade booklet.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The amazing thing I continue to discover about diary work is how useful a resource it is when looking at your life from a higher vantage point.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: What better place to turn to than my own words, written with secret honesty on the pages of my private inner world, the writing becomes stories that unfold mysteriously without force.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Life experiences keep finding me and I keep responding and then recording.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the dance of life's call and response emerges day after day, I jot down what feels noteworthy and keep these notes for record keeping.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: In doing so, they become the story of my days, in the sometimes misty days of the many shifts and changes that are happening in my life.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: For me, even my work, like my memoir and the writing I share on this podcast, have become a diary of sorts.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I write what is true and personal, a dream I had over the summer hinted at this.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I worked retail in a shop that sold all kinds of products from a peril to home goods.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was organizing some clothes on a rack and one dress in particular stood out.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I liked the way it looked, so I pulled it off the rack.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: held it up to admire its style.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: The dress was sleeveless and knitted, and as I looked at it before me, the weight of the stitch is hung heavy, and my arm grew tired, so I put it back on the rack.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's lovely, I thought, but it's not for me.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: As if I would grow tired wearing the weight of it, then I walked to the back of the store and went into a bathroom.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: After I closed the door, I put on a bathrobe while looking down at my bare body as I wrapped the robe around me.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the dream, I thought about how my work required me to be naked.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the bathroom, I felt like it was no big deal.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was just the nature of the work.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, this is symbolic.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: My writing is the retail store asking me to be vulnerable, stripped down to expose the truth of my humaneness.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the knitted dress represents the life I left behind as a knitwear designer.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was pretty, but it was not for me.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The dress even looked like one of the last knit patterns I ever designed.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, there is likely more to the dream that I will understand later, so I wrote down the details I remembered, in case I want to reference them in the future.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Writing allows me a path to process not just my sleeping dreams, but my waking ones too.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: and a way to express my emotions and a place to record the language of spirit that I have experienced through various symbols and synchronicities.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is one treasure of writing.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: To have a book of my very own life to hold as a necessary guide to understanding myself, reflection helps here, not to dwell in the past, but to learn from it, and to move forward in life with wisdom.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Recently, I was drawn to look back at some of my writing as a way to better understand myself as a writer.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: In September, I wrote a diary-like entry in my newsletter for Circle Beauty House that I was called to revisit.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I found it interesting that out of all the things I could write about, I chose to write about transformation, about change, and becoming a new version of myself.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I had to tell you one thing at this very moment, I would whisper, I used to be someone else.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if my soul couldn't take one more second of who I had become.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The change was gradual.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: There were moments that felt like a bandage had been torn off.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exposing a rawness I'd never before allowed myself to feel.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bandage had to come off because it wasn't actually healing me.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as it peeled away, a spaciousness was revealed within me.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The inner chambers of my heart worked with me for the bomb.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this trade of healing, my soul would no longer allow me to wear falsity for safety.
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the layers of my old self were, and still are, being pinched and scraped away to my core, making way for a new self, which happens to also be my true self and my most harmonious self.
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am able to sense a new contentment, fulfillment, and a very real persistence to be of service.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: This gives me hope that the soul growth I've been experiencing will find some steadiness soon, and that I will have the internal and external resources to bring more of my creative visions to life again.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: What a process this has been, thank my heart for my own intuition and my devotion to listening and writing.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: This has helped me tremendously to stay grounded and to find clarity even through the mess of it all.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you experiencing some kind of soul growth too?
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even as I penned the newsletter, I was intrigued by the subject.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of all the things I could write about to share with my readers, the topic of transformation authentically came forward.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The wonder of becoming someone new has clearly become a connection point I can share with others.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: This truly feels linked to my work in the world.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not just because my intuition is telling me this is what I meant to do, but because I feel it fully throughout my creative body, I feel an inner, green light, green light as in go, and symbolically green as a color of healing, green as a color of the heart.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: After rereading that newsletter, I felt an urge to rummage further back through my writing, wanting to revisit my first audio newsletter I shared about two years ago.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was something nagging at me, so I searched through my files to find an essay I wrote, and published, and later deleted, called when everything changes.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Listening to the short piece, transported me back to that time in my life when I had already stepped into the unknown and had no idea how dense and long this in-between stage of the transformation cycle would be.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: My husband helped me record the writing and he even wrote a piece of music for the intro.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: My voice was shaky and fast.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: The words spoken quickly as not to take up too much space or time.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the essence of the Harmony Channel podcast comes through in those brief three minutes.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: What was missing was my trust in my voice, my ideas, my calling, and so I discarded the work, thinking there must be something else I should be doing.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why talk about change?
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to talk about the thing that comes after the change.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't wait to get to the next thing the thing I was meant to be doing, but I couldn't quite see or understand what that would be, and so I wrote about what was alive in me at the moment, at the time that was the experience of becoming someone new.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything has changed, or mostly everything, or so it feels.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Although most of what has transformed recently has been a choice, change takes time to integrate, especially when one relocates with a family of four plus an elderly mom and two cats from the west side of the country to the east.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: My family and I have returned to New England to find our new way in a new to us state in the green mountains of northern Vermont, the original homeland of the western Abanaki people.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: We live at the base of a mountain, a very beautiful area with strong grounding, yet freeing energy.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The mountain is why I am here.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: She called me and I listened, so I am here listening some more, listening to learn.
• 12:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Listening to find peace, play, practice, presence, and to find the poetry in it all.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: The poetry so far is not written, it is felt.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It lingers in the breath of this enchanted forest surrounding and inspiring me.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Someday, the poetry might come through as words for play, for practice, for peace.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: But for now, the poetry comes through in how I live, how I dream, and how I intertwine those two to become my new body of work, which I will share more about in the coming months, as I weave words into stories and dream images into visions, with harmony at the hearth and helm of my heart.
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The words, as I mentioned, are a new outlet for me to explore, and I came to them because I was called to them by the great mystery who asked me to share in this new way.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I listened to the call and responded reluctantly by peering at the past through the
• 13:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some, I never cared to remember, but trusting the inner call, I dedicated myself to organizing those memories into words.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those words became sentences that piled up to form an entire book, a book about my life, and the way I came to be whole, or as near to whole as I have ever been.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: The book is called The Sound of Center, a memoir of listening.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything feels new and different as I become a person who writes and lives in the mountains of Vermont.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am learning to navigate this new way through my listening practice, which brings me to stillness each morning to feel and hear what my center, my wholeness, wants to relay.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am learning to embrace the cycles that have ended, transformed, and are still in the in-between before they begin a new.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am learning that I will always be learning, and I will always be in some kind of cycle, ending, transforming, in-between, or a new.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you are curious, you can read about how a person can be in a season of feeling stuck and aching with loss, but can listen to the call of center to dig herself out of depression, confusion, and depletion to know herself more clearly.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you are curious, I have written about such a cycle.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have written my life into stories to make use of their lessons to share with anyone who may need a reminder that love, belonging and healing within are attainable.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was a time when I wasn't sure those things were meant for me.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: or even sure what that meant entirely, and I definitely wasn't sure writing a book was possible either, until I listened to the sound of center and knew it was possible because I could feel its truth was their waiting for me.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: The sound of center, a memoir of listening, is one of the greatest mysteries of my life so far.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: While writing this book, I have learned and discovered so much that I wasn't sure releasing it was even necessary.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then I listened, and I heard that journey wasn't over.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: This book with stories of my past wants to have a life of its own, and so it is.
• 16:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: After revisiting when everything changes, I felt curious to go further back still, to my published diary-like entry from January 15th, 2024, that I included in my memoir.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: January 15, 2024.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Last August, I moved with my family to a valley nestled in the mountains of Idaho, where I felt time would be more open, like the vastness of the valley itself.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I sensed this new place would allow a new way to emerge, as I found myself in a winter cycle of life.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: that in between time when something has ended and spring has yet to arrive and I don't know what type of new growth awaits.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the waiting I needed to quiet myself and listen for messages of guidance on where I was meant to go next.
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over the ensuing months, I kept thinking I had worked out which way this new version of my life would go.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thinking at first it would be one way.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yet then the more I listened, the more I heard and felt that that way was not the way I had, not for me.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I rested a little longer and listened a little more deeply to understand the direction of my true north.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had heard the call to write for some time and thought it would be a good side practice as I was waiting.
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I thought that I would soon be developing a new business or product, and in the meantime writing might be a friend to keep me company through the process.
• 18:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the months passed, there was no grand business idea or product line to develop.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was only this book and the possibility of many others.
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: This book is the dawn of my new life.
• 18:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am living on the horizon now, living my future by reflecting upon my past to openly share with you.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the last few months, I have written and rewritten large chunks of this book about three times, from three various angles this book of my life.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Its direction keeps shifting and changing.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Turns out it is very difficult to reach back forty-five years and compile and compress one's life into a tidy book that becomes a compelling read.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I suppose I am not completely surprised.
• 18:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I put off starting this book for at least a year because I knew it would not be easy.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I knew I was meant to share my life story for whatever reason, no matter how uninteresting it seemed.
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I kept hearing the message to write, but I was waiting for the moment when what I had lived through made sense, and I have been waiting for life to become more level and even, and for that clarity moment to come piercing through the clouds of uncertainty, allowing the work to begin.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I put off writing because I felt resistance every time I thought about it.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The thought of going back, back to those places in my life, those places I had hidden, those places I knew would hurt to remember, also that I could share them with strangers, was more than bewildering, it was terrifying.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I kept waiting for the universe to show me something else I could do instead.
• 19:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the quieter I became, the more clearly I could hear and feel that yes, there was a new life.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: A new way was waiting for me.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But first it needed to begin here on these pages.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: This book is the key to opening the door of my future.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: This book you hold in your hands is the work I have been looking for elsewhere, yet finding right here.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now I am trusting it is meant to be and allowing it to take shape.
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alas, here I am sitting down once again, committing myself to writing my life story.
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I prefer to write about the mountains, but first I am led to give generously my story so that you may know me and the way I came to be whole and occasionally even harmonious.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But before there was balance, there was an unraveling of a life as I knew it.
• 20:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You cannot experience the beauty of mystical mending without first dropping some stitches and becoming undone.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or at least, this is how it was for me.
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I share my life with you, for you, in case you are amid your own unraveling.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Know that inner harmony is possible.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do not imagine it is reserved only for a select few.
• 21:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: but isn't instead available to all who listen to the sound of center where the heart compass lives, where the truth of our souls can be uncovered if we are open to it.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now it is November 2026 and through reflecting on all these different writings, I am struck by so much.
• 21:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am struck by how much has actually not changed since January
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: How I've been circling around some of the same patterns, I am struck by how long it has taken me to embrace this path and trust that my writing will support me in some way, even if just through my own spiritual development and growth.
• 22:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am struck that my writing voice actually hasn't changed all that much, or even at all.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is different is also striking on the other side of questioning writing, which honestly may never go away, is a stronger belief in myself and my ability to share my writing and my ability to listen and communicate with the spirits of the land and the spirit of my soul, and that I belong with both words and transformation, and the transformative power of diary work.
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I belong with symbols and stories.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I belong with listening and self-acceptance and devotion to harmony.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Upon reflection, I wonder how much of my fear of being seen and judged for these things has helped me back from truly stepping into a role as a voice for harmony.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here on this podcast, I took such a long break this year, partly because I didn't trust my own aptitude.
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so on the other side of not believing myself is the feeling of being tired of not believing in myself.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: This has grown with time and is something I have been taking note of in my diary.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing gets done with this mindset and I will not reach the depths of my own potential if I cannot get out of my own way and trust myself and my messages with unwavering certainty.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I reflect on the changes in my life, I understand more and more how they have led to the future that I am living now.
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The changes have brought me to open the virtual doors of the School of Harmony.
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: In online space, I am nurturing that feels like a container of change for change.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: A place that feels like a home for creative souls seeking to trust the process of coming into harmony.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is an honor to build the school from the ground up, to be a grounding force as life changes swirl around us.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Writing has been the stone under my feet, and maybe it has been for you as well.
• 24:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: As harmony sometimes asks for so much in our lives to shift, the practice of writing can act as an anchor in a pathway to self-discovery,
• 24:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I stepped into a metamorphosis years ago, without fully understanding it, writing once again became one of my most grounding centering practices.
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I became someone new, writing both in my diary and the story of my life became the best living mirror to see my truth most clearly.
• 24:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can write what is happening and what I'm feeling, then reflect on it later.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Reflection is an important part of the process.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, reflect, digest, to move forward in life with clarity, to have an understanding of where I have been so that I can look back and say, wow, so much has changed, but look at what remains.
• 25:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: See what has not changed, what has stayed with me feels like truth, whether it's creative ideas or core principles.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And reflection allows me the opportunity to look at what has changed too, to see how far I have come from where I was then.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: For now, I am in awe of transformation, it hurts, and sometimes it's our choice, sometimes it is not our choice, but either way, through writing, I find my agency which helps me shape a life with the power of creative freedom, and for this I am grateful.
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do feel this is a great power to behold when we wield our creativity with a wild sense of authenticity, and so I continue to write my life as a practice of building trust in myself, my soul, and the great spirit that guides me.
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're catching this episode in real time, please consider joining the School of Harmony for our next secret diary session on November 14th from 10 to 10 30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
• 26:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: If the practice of diary keeping interests you, I would love to see you for our monthly
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: As always, thank you for listening, I'm off to write because so much has happened over the weekend and I need to catch my diary up.
• 26:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, much love, see you Rose.