February 28, 2023
What’s in a word? Everything! The whole world! As I listen attentively, wholeheartedly exploring this new world of ours, letting go of my expectations and attachments along the way, my thoughts of how things “should be,” I cultivate resilience, as I discover, discern, and deepen my walking the path of “what brings me alive.” Many of the distinctions and themes I have been “leaning into” over these years return to me and resonate with me, calling to me to be explored even more deeply: unconditional commitment, enthusiasm, wholeheartedness, generous listening, compassion, patience, simplicity, faith, integrity, courage. A few days ago,…
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February 14, 2023
“When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart, and where old tracks are lost, a new world is revealed with its wonders.” ––Rabindranath Tagore Bengali poet/philosopher Tagore opens us up to some brilliant questions: What old words is it time to let die out on the tongue? What new melodies are ready to break forth from the heart? What old tracks is it time to lose? What wonders are the new world revealing to me? As I, sometimes cautiously, sometimes boldly, move out of my self ‑imposed 3 year exile from traveling, and…
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January 31, 2023
When seeing a strange photograph like the one above, you might, perhaps, think I am asking you about the geographical location. I am, however, not. I am, instead, asking you a question around where you are located when you are with anther human being. .…At first glance, this may occur to you as a peculiar question, for sure, but one, when responded to with “over there, with them,” makes all the difference in the essential quality of the conversation. When you are truly “over there, with them,” what can open up is a profound quality of connection, and the person…
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January 17, 2023
“The time is always right to do what is right.” – Martin Luther King This is a time of new beginnings, for my life, for our lives, for the world. In the last few years, we have been navigating our way through the challenging space of constraints, cocooning ourselves in our home, finding new ways for living a life worth living. In the midst of the trauma of such a sudden change, the separation of ourselves from a world that had a certain momentum, we find ourselves at the brink of questions that want to be…
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January 3, 2023
With deep love for all – that – is, and a profound respect for the earth and the land, and with honor for you, and a profound sense of the privilege of my life, the opportunity to serve That which is greater than myself, I welcome you, and welcome us all, into our next year. Somehow, I am sensing my own approach to this year would be well served by creating a commitment to “Living in Wonderment.” The action dimension of that is “Listening for Wonderment.” That is active; that is creative. Listening for Wonderment magnetizes a certain horizon, borne…
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December 20, 2022
With gratitude, I begin this posting with a deep “Thank you.” Thank you for your listening, your receptivity to whatever these postings, over the last three years, have brought to you. I have delighted in hearing from those of you who have written, to express your inspiration, or your appreciation, or your companionship with me, as we pilgrim together in our journeys. Just before the Winter Solstice, the dark beckons. It is that time of year. I find it is both time to stop, to retreat within, and do some inner work…the work of releasing the residual tensions, and incompletions…
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December 6, 2022
Ganesh, the Master, incense rising from his crown chakra, brings me the Teachings from hardships.‑Amba Gale, November 28. 2023 One of the most powerful deities in the pantheon of Hindu deities is Ganesh. Ganesh is the bringer, and remover, of obstacles. The Hindus tell us that our job, as humans, is to move through the teachings that obstacles bring, on behalf of strengthening our muscles for living life wakefully. When confronted with an obstacle in our path, what do we do? What do you do? I’ve noticed, myself, that I often attempt to positive think it away, avoid it, deny…
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November 21, 2022
In a recent posting, I invited us to entertain what it’s time for. In this one, I am asking a new question: what is it not time for? Which begs the question, as well, what is time for? What it’s not time for is avoiding, hardening our hearts to, the sadness, the woundedness, the broken heartedness, the grief. What it’s not time for, is to retreat into resignation, to not be willing to experience the joy, as well, to insist in living in my old story…. being on automatic, following, with no awareness, my old habitual patterns, living out of…
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November 7, 2022
I am deeply feeling that we are, that I am, at the end of a particular cycle, a particular iteration, a particular passage, in my own life. And that it is time to move on. Covid, along with the many passages I have taken within Covid, has re‑shaped me. I am feeling the necessity of a retreat – a time to go into a kind of silence where we can meet the original part of ourselves, in this new beginning, new cycle of existence. This is an invitation to go into the quiet, and below that, into the Silence, to…
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October 25, 2022
As I listen into the question, “What’s it time for now?” I can hear the universe calling: This is a time for New Beginnings. It is a time for re‑examining our lives, for leaving behind those previous identities and conversations that were right in one life’s iteration and not right in the next. In the summer 2019, I did just that. I journeyed to Isle Royale, National Park, in Lake Superior. That was the outer journey. The inner journey was one of crossing a threshold that was a challenging and dangerous crossing for me. Why dangerous? Dangerous, because if I…
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October 11, 2022
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.–Heraclites I’ve been realizing… We think we live as a continuity, but we do not. Who we were yesterday may not BE the same person at all as who we are today. Conversations can cause a transformation. You can enter a conversation as one person and come out as a different person. Having just completed the first three days of leading The Heart of Leadership, for the leadership of Mary Bridge Children’s, an extraordinary healthcare system in this Great Northwest,…
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September 26, 2022
‘Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.’–Howard Thurman I love this quote, by Howard Thurman. I love it so much, I created an entire course out of it, a course called “The Joy of Being, Designing your Life.” The phrase, “The joy of being,” is a phrase that jumped out to me, right into my heart, as I read “The Good Earth” by Eckart Tolle, another wonderful master whose good work has served me so well, in behalf of living in…
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September 12, 2022
While the world wages wars and argumentativeness will, apparently, not cease, there is always this: The enduring truth of the poetic imagination. There, you are not lost. —Amba Gale In a world that announces chaos, violence, and unpredictable events at every turn, we are not immune from being deeply affected, personally. The teachings of these times, often laden with grief, with loss, with heart brokenness, also lead us into new insights, new revelations, new resiliences. And, they lead us sometimes, to a necessity to face our own reluctance to let go of all we already know, including all of our plans.…
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August 30, 2022
Do you have the patience to waitUntil the dust settles and the water is clear?— Lao Tzu, Tao Ching The water is not yet clear.The dust has not yet settled. The changes are happening so rapidly, we must meet them with an open heart, with curiosity, and with a generous mind, a mind that lives beyond the borders of right and wrong, a mind that is willing to postpone all judgment, all expectations. Only here can I find peace, and a waiting that presages new futures founded in what “wants to happen.” As difficult as it might be, this is…
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August 16, 2022
While we are living in a world which is constantly changing, we are also wired for resisting change. Our relationships are changing, our ways of communicating with one another are changing, the kind of opportunities we have for educating, or developing ourselves are changing, ways of doing business are changing, people around us are changing, and our life circumstances are changing. Sometimes, these changes take the form of loss: a loved one is leaving us, a cherished job is disappearing, it’s time to move out of a home we have been living in, or work in a different way, either…
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August 2, 2022
“Comparison is the Thief of Joy.” —Teddy Roosevelt “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Teddy Roosevelt said that. A remarkable quote. This is my personal story about that, a story that took place during the first year of Covid, 2020. In March of this year, 2022, I had the privilege of leading my foundational program, a course called The Heart of Leadership, twice – one for a client company, and one for the public. It was the first time I led, live, in a public setting, since 2019, as I stopped making this conversation available during Covid, not able to…
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July 19, 2022
“How can I be still? By flowing with the stream.” Lao Tzu said that, in his Book of Wisdom, The Tao Te ching, otherwise known as “The Way,” a philosopher poet/wise man of immense wisdom, in the 6th century. What an absolutely amazing realization. The streams and rivers do keep flowing, just like life. It is only our resistance to that flow, to what life offers us, presents us with, that incurs our agitation. “What is it that I am currently resisting?” is always a good question. What if we could be still, just surrender, just accept, just receive everything that…
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July 6, 2022
Think upon this: you are not lost. It may feel that way, at times, with the circumstances of the world swirling about us, as they are, and impinging upon our consciousness, as they do. However, consider this: You are not lost. You have only to touch the rare moment of Eternity, of Rest, of no time in time to know That Who You Are is beyond your small sense of yourself, your small sense of the world, and your small sense of being in this particular place at this particular time, in this particular world. You, however are Awareness waiting…
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June 28, 2022
I am creating a special edition of my blog posting this week, as I have had the privilege of being in a particular conversation that I’d say is vitally important at this time, a time of shifting sands, beneath our feet, a time of importance for intentionally crossing thresholds. This posting points to a potent distinction that allows such a threshold crossing. The painting, above, was created by Debbie Hulbert, a participant in our fall 2020 virtual offering of Crossing Thresholds, a course that was based on my newly published book, designed to facilitate participants in crossing their next threshold.…
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June 20, 2022
Every five hundred to one thousand years, it is said, the Phoenix, a beautiful, scarlet and gold, giant, mythical bird, rises from the ashes of its own death. There is, the myth says, only one Phoenix on the planet at any one time. It sets itself on fire, inside of a nest of boughs an spices, and is consumed by the flames. Out of its own ashes, it arises, born newly. The regeneration of itself contains the ashes of its predecessor as an aspect of its next being. What a metaphor! This is such a time, for such an Awakening.…
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June 7, 2022
The Buddhists ask the question, “How do you keep your heart open in hell?” It is a worthwhile question, a relevant question, in all times, and perhaps, particularly, in these chaotic and anxiety – producing times, in this time of war, and despair, and senselessness violence and children dying. And underneath it all, is pain, anguish, brokenness. The importance, nay, the criticality, of living with an open heart, confronts us on a daily basis, for if we close our hearts, we die. “The brittle heart is easy to break,” my poem, “Heartbreak,” says, in my book, Crossing Thresholds. That message…
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May 23, 2022
Without trust, there is no peace. I have been thinking a lot about trust of late, trust in the universe; trust in the Tao, trust in the journey, trust that we belong to one another, that we are interconnected, as deeply as the roots of the aspen grove are connected to one another underneath the soil. Brother David Steindl‑Rast, Benedictine monk and one of the great spiritual teachers of our time call Faith, which is very resonant with Trust, “the bliss of certainty.” That phrase stays with me, begging to be examined, as we know that the only certainty there…
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May 6, 2022
February 9 is the “echoing” day of my birth. My husband and I gifted me with a journey to Muir’s Valley, Yosemite, now a Valley belonging to us all, where nature graces us with her beauty, her power, her wonder, her awesome, and the heart can sing with the rivers and the streams. Today, instead of some prose, may I offer you a few Blessings, and the gifts of pleasure, enjoyment, and heart‑song as you listen to my husband Don’s original Bluegrass song, Shadowline. Accompanied by our video, I invite you to delight with us in the shadows cast by…
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April 26, 2022
This is a time for new beginnings. Each morning, I give myself a new beginning, consciously, intentionally, gratefully. In his book, Consolations, David Whyte says, “Beginning well involves a clearing away of the crass, the irrelevant, and the complicated to find the beautiful, often hidden lineament of the essential and the necessary.” I “begin well” by gifting myself each day with a morning practice, a practice where, in my chair, in my “poetry corner,” I create ways of settling into silence. Here, I find peace within, and the gift of experiencing life as a blessing. Poetic words, as well, start…
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April 11, 2022
This last week, in our first three days of our Heart of Leadership, one of the participants was a man whose purpose in life, whose orientation, whose commitment in life, is to hold a space for all different points of view to be heard, gotten, and appreciated. That reminded me of a cartoon I once saw, with two people on each side of the number 6, or 9, depending upon the point of view. The man who is standing on the side of the number that looks like “9” says to the person looking at the 6, “Nine.” The other…
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March 29, 2022
Coming out from behind our masks, what do we find? People. People loving, people hurting, people having turned away from any light, people grieving, people hiding, people willing to come out of hiding, to be seen again. People longing to be held, to be touched, to be loved. The last two years of Covid have affected us, perhaps in more ways than we even know, unless we look, and listen, deeply. During this month, I enjoyed the extraordinary privilege of leading my foundational program, The Heart of Leadership, for one of my dearest clients. In that five‑day program, we entered…
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March 15, 2022
When I was a child, each year my parents took me to Yosemite Valley. There, breathing in and breathing out the pure air, experiencing the awestruck wonder of a starlit sky, the great granite domes, spires, and cliffs rising sheer, straight up from the valley, I touched Peace. Every time. Our connection with nature gives us that gift, reliably, sustainably, deeply. John Muir called it “The University of the Wilderness.” Each year in Yosemite, a natural event occurs in the month of February. A small waterfall, depending upon the snowfall that year, falls from the east side of El Capitan,…
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March 1, 2022
During these days, I constantly ask myself, “What can I do?” “What can we do?” We can recognize the unity that is occurring throughout most of the world. We can spend some time each day, extending our hearts to the people whose lives have been displaced. We can learn from our fellow global friends to extend our hands. I was recently speaking with a most empowering man on the phone who was supporting my husband and me to procure tickets for an international trip we are taking later this year. We asked him where he was located. He said, “Moldova.”…
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February 16, 2022
In a dangerous world, where violence and strife prevail outside, where the lines of war are being drawn as I write, how do we live? How do we live peacefully? How do we live, emanating love for our planetary companions? How do we carry the energy of peace with us as we walk through our days? How do we live free from fear while the news each day bombards us with messages of coming destruction? How do we not exhaust ourselves with our own busy‑ness and allow ourselves to be overwhelmed with the plethora of advice coming our way? These…
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February 1, 2022
In a time when the “world is too much with us,” to quote Wordsworth, it can be difficult, sometimes, to move from a conversation inside my own head, which I sometimes wake up into, in the morning, a conversation filled with frustrations, worries, and fears, into a space of serenity, equanimity, centeredness. I have a practice, each and every day, which I love to engage. I write. Before I write, however, I stop, pause, make, stir, and then drink my soothing tea. I watch the tea settle into my stomach. I observe myself inhaling, and exhaling, observing my breath, maybe…
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January 18, 2022
We are all human. Very human. And we are all imperfect, very imperfect. In fact, perfectly imperfect. Our very humanity, our very imperfections, our very wounds and vulnerabilities, flailings and failings, crashing on the rocks, and recovering our well – being, thriving through the storm – all are the Great Learnings of our Lifetime. Living through this pandemic consciously, and all that is being wrought, brings us to great trials, Great Sleep‑fulness, Great Wake‑fulness. If you have been reading Blog postings for a while, or worked with me, you know how serious I am, how committed I am, what a…
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January 4, 2022
Have trust in the way things are and are not. Love the world, and others, and yourself. Then, you can live in peace. By Amba Gale Perhaps I would not say “Happy New Year to you” this year so much. For that phrase, always said at the beginning of the next year, becomes a cliché, and without any created intention, and thoughtful blessings behind it, means nothing. Clichés have a way of putting us to sleep. Not only that, if you are like me, thinking it, or speaking it brings up the mind at this time. And, according to the…
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December 21, 2021
Full Moon, emerge! Come out of hiding. Teach me how to love. By Amba and Don Gale In my last posting, December 8, I invited you to reach out to someone in your past, perhaps even someone who has passed, and write to them the words inside your heart that you have never said to them. I also gave you the gift of listening to a song my husband wrote to his Mother, from his new album of original songs, Looking Back, Looking In, a deeply introspective body of songs. Here’s the song again, Momma. in the case you missed the last…
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December 3, 2021
As the end of this year comes upon us, for many of us it is time to stop, to pause, to reflect, to look at our lives, and to be with those we love and have loved. Covid, if we have listened in a certain way, has given us many Teaching lessons – gifts of discovering patience, living graciously with uncertainty, dancing with the unfolding of the world, experiencing the beauties of nature as a healing balm, experiencing grief, and loss, finding ways to live with our fears and worries in a way that they can be included, and perhaps,…
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November 24, 2021
Tomorrow gives us an “official” day for giving thanks… …for giving thanks for all the aspects and dimensions of our lives for which we are grateful. In her book, Wake Up Grateful, based in Brother David Steindl‑Rast’s teachings, Kristi Nelson suggests we bring gratefulness or “great fullness” to our everyday, ordinary, reality. What if we bring gratefulness to being alive, to waking up each morning, to taking our first breath of each day, to our family, to those who have passed, to those of us who are still present? What if we were to BRING our created gratefulness to all the events…
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November 9, 2021
Being in Yosemite National Park with my parents was one of the first memories that I have. Here, you see a photo of my father, most likely taken the first time my parents took me to Yosemite, at Happy Isles, where the Merced River flows from the High Sierra Mountains on its way to the sea. I was about one year old. All my senses awakened there, in the beauty of nature and that Great Land. I remember that my whole body felt Happy, Awake, Alive. I returned every year. My favorite, favorite place there, amid so much beauty, was…
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October 12, 2021
Outside, it is still dark. The coming season of inner and outer darkness calls to us to drop down deep, where the flame of our own inner wisdom is lit and enough to guide our way. It is a time for Listening. To what do I listen> I listen to Mary Oliver singing her life, and my life, into joy, amazement, astonishment each pre – dawn morning as I rise to greet the day. I listen to the objects all around me from my travels, speak to me of lands that I have loved. I listen to the heron fishing…
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September 27, 2021
“You can’t do good work if you are impatient,” my husband, songwriter and producer of his first CD recording of his original songs, says to me. “You have got to get the patience thing handled,” he says, referring to the pace at which the project is being completed. True, enough. This also applies to me. You could also call this moment, although it may seem somewhat incomprehensible or esoteric, “leaning into surrendering to the unfolding conversation of the universe.” Those are big words and may sound odd. At the same time, if you lean into them, you might get what…
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September 15, 2021
Last summer, on a quiet day, a sailboat made its way past the island in front of our cabin. It seemed to glide effortlessly as it caught the wind, its sails billowing. The energy of the universe, and of Grace, moves through us in just that way. However, to tap into it, we need to raise our sails, as well. We also (and this is hard for most of us) must surrender, or let go of needing to control, which need stops us from accessing that flow. Sometimes, it is hard to let go of control. And it is exactly…
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August 31, 2021
In David Whyte’s book, Crossing The Unknown Sea, Brother David Steindl‑Rast says to him, “The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.” What an amazing thought to ponder. This is a story about wholeheartedness. In the heart of the forest is a wounded tree. This tree is located in the magical, mystical forest of Glenstal Abbey, in County Limerick, Ireland, and we were led there by one of the Benedictine monks, Brother Anthony, who guarded the forest with his love. The tree was a total surprise. My husband and I were journeying with Turas D’Anam, which in Irish, means “Journey of the Soul,” in…
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August 17, 2021
I have just returned to the mainland from Isle Royale National Park, where, with Practice, you can tune into the Silence. Nature does that for me, if I approach Nature as my Teacher and my guide, with an appropriate reverence, humility, and longing. Though “letting silence speak” may sound like an oxymoron, it is not. And though you may think I can describe what Silence speaking sounds like, I cannot. Not really. Not if you want a direct experience. A direct experience, which is after all what matters, is beyond understanding, and a description is the language of understanding. It…
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August 3, 2021
As you read this posting, I will be in Isle Royale National Park, where the pristine wilderness – the sounds of the day, and the deep blue silence of the night, can seep into my soul and speak to me, bring me on an inner journey where, like a pilgrim, I find myself anew. Still at home, I am beginning to prepare: to prepare to being open, receptive to the land and the lake and the sky; to prepare myself for the gift of Observation, to being present, to bringing myself into the amazing land of Wonder, where the trees…
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July 20, 2021
We are in what many indigenous people call “liminal space” – a space between rooms, a space of infinite possibility. As we gradually make our way out of the last year and a half of our lives, stepping into, and creating, our new, future, may we do so consciously, intentionally, wisely, lovingly. Let us not think about “returning” or “getting back to normal.” Perhaps, just perhaps, there is no “normal,” and there is no “going back.” Let us stop, and listen, and then move forward, following our intuition to guide our way, shedding what must be shed along the way,…
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July 6, 2021
The other day, I was sitting on the back deck, with my husband, and noticed I was not hearing what he was saying to me. Instead, I was listening to myself talking to myself! The minute I noticed, I shifted gears and started listening, intentionally. I got curious about what he was saying. I listened for discovering something new in what he was saying, and to be surprised by it, contributed to, by it. Sharing together, our conversation took us to a place that neither of us had been before we started conversing. Did you know that the root for…
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June 22, 2021
While we may think we know how life will unfold from here, if we tell ourselves the truth, we have absolutely no idea. I have learned many things during our experience with Covid, one of which is this: we cannot predict the future. While we human beings have an enormous resistance to uncertainty, uncertainty has been our home these last twelve months, and still will be. So, the question becomes: who do we need to be to live in this home, strong, inspired, enlivened? Boris Pasternak said, “Surprise is the great gift which life can grant us.” If we were…
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June 8, 2021
We are so filled with prescriptions for positivity, that sometimes we forget to include, to allow for, to put our arms around, all those parts of ourselves that are hurting, that are lamenting, that are grieving, to be with what has ended, and embrace those parts of our lives, or ourselves, that it is now time to let go. As I say in one of my poems, “Heartbreak,” in my book, Crossing Thresholds, Island Reflections, pain not honored or fully experienced hides in the years, hides in our body/mind, goes underground, and so we live with a brittle heart, not…
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May 25, 2021
Each morning, before I go to my office, in my morning practice of drinking tea, and reading poetry, and writing, with an intention to “get out of my head” and “get out of my plans” and move into the natural world “out here,” something new clicks for me. The morning, noticing the bright red rhododendron blossoming near the greening of the leaves, and the waning petals of my magnolia tree, the poem, “Magnificent Magnolia Morning” came my way, opening the territory for me to reflect upon the impermanence of all things. Even though we often avoid it, or deny it,…
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May 11, 2021
Several weeks ago, I was staying in a lodge in Southern Washington where my husband and I would be attending a Creativity Painting session the next day. Never considering myself much of a painter, I thought I would enjoy stretching some new creativity muscles, leaning into the “unknown,” letting go of my own painting critic, who has been with me since grade school, and inviting the Painting Muse in. The night before that painting session, a poem came to me, quite suddenly, and I wrote it down. Peonies were at the center of that poem. I could not recall what…
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April 27, 2021
A blessing is a special speaking, and a special listening, or, as John O’Donohue says, in To Bless the Space between Us, “a gracious invocation where the human heart pleads with the divine heart, cries out to its divine ground.” Today’s poem, Blessing for the Blossoming, comes right out of my own, current journey. We have a magnolia tree in our yard, which is springing into spring!!! Like the magnolia tree, I sense a gradual awakening in my own heart, my own spirit, and I ask for that, as well. Like a pilgrim, each morning, I walk the uneven path…
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April 13, 2021
Most recently, one of the Great Lessons I am being taught, during this Covid Crisis, is to stay true to the Creative Voice that is my own. To do that, I need to set aside my critic, and listen, deeply, to my own wisdom, my own intuition, my own deep heart knowledge, that speaks to me when I go deep into my own, inner Silence, the Silence that awaits me when I let go of identifying with my thinking mind. The mind is so loud, with its positions, opinions, judgments, beliefs, need to be right, need to make others wrong,…
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