Category Archives: Listen to your heart

Looking for Space….A Call to Inspiration


(Originally published in “A Call to Inspiration” Blog on June 30, 2010)

By Andrea Hylen

After spending several hours writing and researching information for the blog this morning, I added a picture to the blog and all of the words were lost. For a moment, I sat here with my mouth open in shock and then opened to a new inspiration. Change is like that. Awakening is like that. Walking down the path, adjusting to a change, finding new answers and living in the moment.

I will re-write that blog in the future. For now, I am going to change direction and share a simple song from John Denver.

Looking for Space was released in Feb 1976, during my first year of college, almost 35 years ago. The words have expanded in depth over the years. As I meet people in person and on-line, I see the song as a theme for the world. The words connect with all ages, genders, and cultures. We are living in extraordinary times. Music is one of the healers and awakeners.

I found a beautiful video on Youtube with the song and nature scenes. The words remind me that we are on a journey of life. All of us have moments of soaring like the eagle and weeping in despair. We can connect with the center of our heart, Spirit, and nature to awaken and remember who we are.

Here are some of the words:

On the road of experience, I’m trying to find my own way.
Sometimes I wish that I could fly away
When I think that I’m moving, suddenly things stand still
I’m afraid ’cause I think they always will

And I’m looking for space
And to find out who I am
And I’m looking to know and understand
It’s a sweet, sweet dream
Sometimes I’m almost there
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
And sometimes I weep in despair

All alone in the universe, sometimes that’s how it seems
I get lost in the sadness and the streams
Then I look in the center, suddenly everythings clear
I find myself in the sunshine and my dreams

Link to John Denver’s Looking for Space:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWfxuzJYNgY

Embrace the adventure,
Andrea

Day 1 Photography and Doodle-Trader Joe’s is an Event

Two or three times per week, I walk about a mile to Trader Joe’s. I purchase whatever I can carry in two cloth bags or I swing by for samples. The samples make this an event.

On the way into the store, select a shopping basket, not a cart.

Make a beeline to the far corner in the back and get a free sample of coffee.

Check out the sample.

Walk around the store, shopping and drinking coffee.

Find a new food and read the label for possible future.

Grocery shopping is an Event!

Trader Joe’s is an Event!
Doodled the Adventure of Trader Joe’s

WEEK 1- Tools for Dreaming, Open to Inspiration: Step 1- Listen to your Heart

This is a follow-up blog to my first USTREAM show: Open to Inspiration. It is a written list of the ideas and the tools I presented with a few more details.

The first step is Listen to Your Heart. On the first show, I am encouraging you to create an environment to dream and listen to your heart. Your heart is filled with thoughts, desires, longing, ideas, wishes and dreams. This month, we are spending time visioning, dreaming and listening. If you have done this before, inspire yourself to dream again and again. Expand on your dreams. Allow the ideas to flow and take you to your highest good.

You are on an adventure with yourSelf! And this is forever. Dreams continue to evolve and grow along with you.

To stimulate the environment of dreaming, get some magazines. You can buy them or find people who are finished with old magazines (friends, neighbors, Dr’s office) You can borrow them from the library for daydreaming (no cutting the library magazines!) Find pictures and words on the internet. Scrap booking stickers are great, too. Sometimes you can find stickers with pages of inspiring words.

Look for articles, pictures and words that are interesting to you or make you feel good. You may even have a physical response to some of the things in the magazine. Curiosity, familiarity, joy, excitement, wonderment. Sometimes I find that my heart will do a flip flop or the palms of hands will start tingling when I find something I feel a connection. Observe any reactions you have to things in the magazines.

You are collecting data about yourself. Some of this will feel like it is from your mind. Always check back in to see how your heart is reacting.

With the magazines, you can do a series of activities.

1. Treasure maps/Vision or dream boards. Use a piece of poster board, scrap booking paper or even a page in a journal. Pick out things you want to vision. Several of the things on my vision board for 2010 are:

A) a picture of a cat with the words Good House. I am looking for a home for my cats or learning how to live on the road with them. I love them. They stir my heart. The care of them is a focus for me.

B) A picture of a woman exercising with Yoga. It reminds me to take care of my physical body.

C) A picture of the Jonas Brothers with the words “expressing your heart ‘n soul.” They inspire me to be creative and stay connected to my heart. I feel a connection to their music.

D) I also have the words Discover, Doing+good and Oh, yes I can!

2. Vision or dream journals. A friend of mine, Karen Porter inspired me to put my vision board into my journal. Her idea is to buy composition books, cover the front cover with pictures from magazines, cut out words and place them at the top of each page of the journal.

This journal can have a specific purpose like a travel journal, ideas for a project or a business or a place to record daily activities, dreams, quotes, and ideas.

This year I am using mine to record things every day. It will have ticket stubs, brochures, quotes, to-do-lists. It will include happy and sad moments. I will work through things in my journal to like the next steps on my move to California or my relationship with my family.

By placing words and pictures at the top of the all of the pages, I am surprised each time I turn the page to see a message for me on that day. I love how the words and pictures connect with what is going on in my life.

3. 12 month intuitive reading for the year. Another friend, Jayne Howard Feldman inspired me to do a 12 month reading journal. I cut pictures and words out of a magazine and put them into a bag. I closed my eyes and thought about January 2010 and pulled out a few of the clippings. Then, I used a glue stick to attach them to a page in a spiral notebook. I left 8 pages empty to record things during the month. Then, I created a page for February, March, April, and so on. It is another way to dream and vision what I want.

4. Building a dream in your journal Make a commitment to yourself to spend 15 minutes a day for one week and write the life you want to create or expand on. In 1991, I wrote the life I wanted to create including a description of my family, children, activities and house that would be big enough to gather communities of people. In 1998, I bought that house. By the time my husband and I found the house, we already had most of the rest of the dream. The community of people I had buildt relationships with for 7 years were already there. When I wrote the dream, it came from a heart’s desire, pure and full of love. I didn’t think that owning the house or having these things would make people love me more. There was nothing in it that was ego driven. There was a deep calling to live that life. And I did.

Rev Michael Bernard Beckwith, the minister at Agape International Spiritual Center in Los Angeles, California, posted this on his Facebook Status the other day. “I am inviting you to be still and discover new territory in your own soul. You will find that this new territory will be the answer to every issue you may be facing. Peace!”

And I am inviting you to take the time to explore, dream and discover.

Next USTREAM show is Saturday, Jan 9 8pm EST. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/open-to-inspiration

USTREAM Show called Open to Inspiration

Last night, I created my first USTREAM show. It is an idea that has been bubbling inside of me since August. I watched Jordin Sparks, the Jonas Brothers, Honor Society, Jason Mraz and Ashton Kutcher’s Football Fantasy on USTREAM over the last few months. The shows were broadcast in living rooms, kitchens, hotel rooms and basements. I was intrigued by the ability to present an idea and interact with people all over the world through Twitter.

I began to feel a “nudge” to have a USTREAM show, but what and why? Other things were happening in my life. The last two months of finishing the sale of my house, my daughter Mary’s wedding in NYC, looking for a home for my cats, moving into my friend Kate’s house for the holidays and preparing for moving out to California.

Over the holidays, Kate, Molly (her daughter), Hannah and I have been creating vision/dream journals. Looking through magazines and daydreaming about the next steps in our lives.

A clear idea came to me this week. Create a USTREAM show called Open to Inspiration and share the 8-step process that came to me during the summer of 2008 while I traveled and blogged.

Let me back up a minute in case you are new to this blog. In the last two years, I have traveled to 70 Jonas Brothers concerts with my teenage daughter, Hannah. It was something we started doing together, two years after her father died. During the summer of 2008, we drove to 15 concerts and had our first summer of blogging. (2009 was 45 concerts)

Last spring, I turned my blogs into a book roughdraft. As I wrote and reflected on that summer, I saw that there was a natural process that emerged. A process I call Open to Inspiration.

Several times a month, I am going to share one of the steps with some tools and ideas of how to practice that step. I have one show posted. The technology and sound will improve as I go along. Here is the link: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/3583808

Within a few days of each show, I will post a blog with the ideas listed and links. Eight months. Eight steps.

Step 1: Listen to your heart