Light Up Your Life – Be a Star

How do we deal with darkness and light in our lives?

Terry Pratchett in Reaper Man wrote: ‘Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.’

…but I agree with Robert D. Hales that ‘Light dispels darkness. When light is present, darkness is vanquished and must depart. More importantly, darkness cannot conquer light unless the light is diminished or departs.’

Moreover, Teal Swan tells us: ‘There is no source of darkness in this universe. There is only the presence of light and the absence of light. Darkness does not exist; it only appears to exist. In truth, it is only the absence of light.’

© Lisa Shambrook

However you choose to deal with the two elements, they will touch your life. The old Indian legend: There are two wolves who are always fighting. One is darkness and despair. The other is light and hope. The question is: which wolf wins? The one you feed. Offers the best insight into how we should deal with them.

I often feel, though, that darkness has been given a bad narrative, I like the dark. I love winter and its cosy early nights, I love being out beneath the stars, and sliding beneath a warm duvet to sleep in the pitch black is heavenly. I’m more comfortable with dark colours, earthy tones, and have a black cat. The dark has its place, without it our internal clocks would go crazy, and so would we!

We need the dark to appreciate the light. Like all opposites, without it life would be dull and unrewarding. Even if we use symbolic darkness, we still need sadness, despair, pain, and trials to know and love happiness, joy, good health, and fulfilment.

© Lisa Shambrook

And after all: Stars can’t shine without darkness…

We’ve all been through dark times and, generally, come out the other side better people. The light at the end of the proverbial tunnel is most welcome. Darkness gives us the opportunity to grasp light and embrace it. Eleanor Roosevelt said: ‘It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness…’ Light your candle and let your light shine.

I’ve written before on who we are, and we’re all a mixture of light and dark, but it would be good to allow our sparkle to shine. We can be positive, happy, and bright, and shine like stars.

© Lisa Shambrook

We are an intrinsic part of this universe, whether you feel it spiritually or physically. In Cosmos, Carl Sagan tells us: ‘The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.’ We are made with the same atoms, molecules, and particles as stars… Think about that for a moment. In fact, this quote from sci-fi writer Doris Lessing enchants me: ‘We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate.’  So, let’s shine like them.

How do you see yourself? Are you made from the same stuff as stars? Whether you believe in Deity, Humanism, Atheism, or you are just Agnostic, DNA and the science of genetics is undeniable. However we dress it up we are created, made, formed with interstellar dust!

And whenever I talk about dust I am pulled right back into Lyra’s world in Philip Pullman’s: His Dark Materials… I won’t give away what Dust is, but it is integral to consciousness. Go read the books…

© Lisa Shambrook

So, light and dark, particles, DNA, and dust, interstellar stardust, are part of us. When we feel dark, or lost in the shadows, we can light the way. Light lives within us, and we can emit it without even thinking. Imagine what we can do if we choose to? ‘To be a star you must follow your own light, follow your own path, and never fear the darkness for that is when the stars shine their brightest.’

Shine – sparkle, glitter, effervesce, shimmer, and glow with the light that lives within you.

© Lisa Shambrook

Find your path, join your constellation, follow your dreams…
Know that when darkness falls it will always be replaced by light.

‘Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.’
– Sarah Williams, Twilight Hours: A Legacy of Verse

The Importance of Daydreaming and Freeing your Imagination…

I write about dreams, about believing in yourself
and reaching for those dreams that inspire you.
The tagline for Beneath the Rainbow is
‘It’s those silly dreams that keep us alive.’
And it really is!

© Bekah Shambrook

Were you the child who got told off at school for gazing out of the window, watching the clouds sail across the sky whilst you should have been learning Pythagoras?

Did you spend time staring into space as dust motes danced through rays of sunshine?

Do you lose yourself in your own mind as rain drums on your windowpane?

Has your boss tapped you on the shoulder as your muse tempts you and files rest unopened on your desk?

Unorganised thought, seeds of inspiration, moments of clarity – can all accompany daydreaming. There is a place for allowing our minds to wander, a place for letting our unconscious play, and it can benefit us.

Some of the greatest minds have come up with their ‘Eureka!’ moments through daydreaming, Richard Branson and Albert Einstein being just two of them.

Scott Barry Kaufman a psychology professor from NYU suggests expanding the list of intelligences to include “spontaneous” cognitive skills like intuition and sudden insights, which are only accessed by letting your mind ramble. So when you got told off for daydreaming many years ago, or just yesterday, know that daydreaming skills are another type of intelligence!

You use the most intricate parts of your brain when you tap into your memory banks and you can experience things that are locked when you are thinking about specific things or tasks.

Free your mind!

© Lisa Shambrook

I’ve found it a natural way to help release stress and anxiety. It’s perhaps the opposite, or maybe companion, to mindfulness in that daydreaming lets your mind wander in an unstructured way, and free thought can be very inspirational.

Giving yourself to your mind’s ramblings can help you unlock the stresses of the day and help inspire you.

It’s also said that depression often kills daydreams, leaving the sufferer feeling flat and low. I’ve had times when my conscious has wiped out my dreams, leaving me only with nightmares, and life becomes one dimensional and hope fades away.

When daydreams or musings exist in my mind there is always hope.

© Lisa Shambrook

Dreaming in the cold light of day binds both the conditions above, it provides motivation. Remember those famous words “I have a dream…”? Martin Luther King Jr acted on his dream and changed history.  Read the transcript of his speech and feel the inspiration, the strength, the hope, and motivation and discover your own dreams.

Daydreaming about our own lives helps us imagine, visualise and make choices about events before they happen, or they can inspire us to make changes.

They can literally change our lives.

© Lisa Shambrook (and this is my cat Raven…see what I did there…)

Where does creativity come from? It’s a mixture of dreams and motivation and action. Daydreaming is our imagination and our imagination is boundless, we can see anything in our mind’s eye and we can free-associate, which leads to both creativity and problem solving.

Our mind can see and go far beyond that which we can physically reach, thereby opening huge potential, wild ideas and even the surreal. It can break us free from the confines of logical thinking and introduce us to the lateral, the unusual and the downright odd.  

‘Perhaps imagination is intelligence having fun,’ said George Scialabba.

Daydreaming can create works of art, music, movies, books and much, much more.

So, take some time out and daydream…

Great advice found in the Nov 2012 Reader’s Digest

After all, Eleanor Roosevelt said
‘The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.’  

Go and find yours…daydream until your muse inspires you…

© Lisa Shambrook

“Those silly dreams are what keep us alive…”
Old Thomas has a dream…one that seems way out of his reach. When he talks about it, it’s with a wry smile and a sigh. Others live his dream while he watches on the side-lines. Will he achieve his last dream, the one that keeps him alive?

Find out in ‘Beneath the Rainbow’ available on Amazon in Paperback and eBook.

Live Your Dream and follow that Rainbow…

Life is meant to be lived…with passion!

I write about dreams – those dreams people have that define who they are, and what they want to achieve – and that’s how we should live. We should have a bucket list, a heart and soul full of wild expectations, and a desire to achieve great things.

I know that most of us are ordinary, we live day-to-day, working to provide, but that doesn’t mean we have to be ordinary… So, do it – live your dreams!

Take time out to think about your dreams…

Yes, most of the time we have to let our heads lead us, but every now and then,
let your heart take over and lead you on an adventure!

Be observant; see what beauty thrives around you

Write down your goals, and do all you can to achieve them!

Reach for the stars

Make time to have fun, and to do the things you love!

Aim high, set your sights…if you have nothing in your viewfinder,
there’ll be nothing to see, nothing to spur you on

Believe in yourself; believe that you can do it…

Most of all – never give up – giving up is a waste,
a waste of all the precious potential that resides inside you!

And, lastly,
‘If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.’
– Albert Einstein

Bluebells © Lisa Shambrook

TELL ME YOUR DREAMS…AND HOW DO YOU LIVE THEM?

“It’s those silly dreams that keep us alive…”

Old Thomas has a dream…one that seems way out of his reach. When he talks about it, it’s with a wry smile and a sigh. Others live his dream while he watches on the side-lines. Will he achieve his last dream, the one that keeps him alive?

Find out in ‘Beneath the Rainbow’

Available at Amazon in Paperback and eBook

Blues Buster: Stars (Waiting on a Dream)

Girl Watching City at Night Free Download Wallpaper at chaoswallpapers.com

 Stars (Waiting on a Dream)

From his perch atop the city, it seemed he could see the entire world.

Below, electricity wreathed the ground in a geometric web of light, winking and flickering in the frigid cold, like a supercharged network created by a techno Jack Frost. Twinkling gold lit up the entire spread of community; interspersed with blinks of red and green ruling the roads, and swathes of neon crawling throughout downtown.

The docks rose in the distance, towering cranes, great shadows on the horizon and the harbour lights danced on black water. The river snaked like a python, like a dark chasm amid the lights and city sprawl, and moved silently through the urban spread until it flicked its tail and faded into the glow on the horizon.

He stared intently at the mathematical placement of roads, intersections and buildings, at the strings of lights that threaded the cityscape, before casting his eyes heavenward and releasing a sigh.

Stars glittered and the moon hung in the indigo sky like a silver marble.

He laughed inwardly, his lip beneath his whiskers curling lightly. He shivered and blew into his cold, weathered hands as the dark sky and dotted galaxies sneaked through his coat. He turned his attention again to the metropolis at his feet.

As he drank in the view, he shifted his weight on the park bench and pulled his camel skin coat close. The city had been his for a while, just a while, just enough to make a name for himself, but there was more to life than fame, and more to this city than cold, twinkling lights. There were better things than your name in lights, better things than hard, gold statuettes, better things than this.

He had no regrets, but she’d been gone for a while, and he missed her.

He liked hearing his name on the lips of others, but no voice beat hers. He adored the cheering of the fans, but her smile was worth more. Oscars shone on his mantelpiece, but no accolade was as soft and satisfying as her sweet kiss.

“I’m coming home, sweetheart…” The words barely left his lips, but they whispered in the raw night air and warmed him.

For a few moments his rheumy eyes wandered the city, remembering, and finally came to rest on the small patch of grass before him. He recalled the young girl kneeling there, staring down across the city in wonder, before leaning over to kiss him. He closed his eyes to capture the moment.

The night wind blew across the city, and up the hillside, chilling his bones and messing his unruly white hair, and he smiled. “I’m coming home…”

Snow began to fall. Soft, thick snowflakes slipped from the sky and grey clouds gently moved across the hillside. The morning would come and the city would slumber beneath a blanket of white, and a lone runner, atop the hill, would alert the authorities to the snow-covered mound on the bench. Blue lights would ride up the hillside, despite the snow, and headlines would be made, but it wouldn’t matter to him, because he’d risen far above the cityscape, far above the snow – and had returned home to the stars and to her soft, sweet kiss.

(541 Words)

My entry into Jeff’s Blues Buster over at The Tsuruoka Files. The prompt song is Lee Ranaldo’s ‘Waiting on a Dream’ and my interpretation took a while coming, but I got there!

Five Sentence Fiction: Forgotten

Dream Scene by Bekah Shambrook (Please do not use without permission)

“So let me tell you about last night, there I was all curled up cosy, head beneath the duvet, heavy breathing, not for any sordid reason mind, just to warm up the icy bed…and my mind began to wander. That half hour, you know the one, before sleep overcomes consciousness, is precious and thoughts of all kinds swim in the murky depths of my brain. No point letting the day’s events wallow, don’t need to rehash that which I can’t change, so I think, I muse, I ruminate – the cogs turn and the gears jump and my imagination escapes with me…
So last night, just before succumbing to slumber, I had the mother of all ideas, the biggest twist and the most amazing denouement in all of history – the best ever best-seller planned out in the utmost detail, right there in my head!
Now I sit with the humming of my laptop heckling me and an illumined blank page scorning my brain as I delve deep inside in vain…and my novel, my best-seller, my way out of here, in the bright light of day – is all but forgotten…”

Written, tongue-in-cheek for Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction check out the other writers in this week’s prompt: Forgotten.