No long ago, I was a passenger on a family road trip with nothing to do but watch the miles flow by so I started looking at the clouds. We were on our way home and I was kinda over the trip by this point, silently wishing for a swift and safe return home.

What I saw in the clouds beside us was a dragon flying fast in the direction we were heading as if guiding me home; clearing the way of any obstacles. What I felt in my heart and body was a sense of relief, of quiet joy, and of the comfort that comes when a friend smiles and says “don’t worry, dear one - I’ve got you.”

The memory of this dragon in the clouds and the way I felt in that moment is something I consciously call forward whenever I feel stuck, hampered on my path, out of my power or in some way small or overwhelmed. I invoke the embodied experience of this great flying creature - not only the image in my mind’s eye but the way it felt bodily, mentally, emotionally and spiritually to be in that moment - and it bolsters my sense of place when the world feels foreign or unknowable and strengthens my resolve when something feels beyond what I can (or should) hope or reach for.

In my mind, this dragon in the clouds is fierce in its love, protective in its posture and clear in its guidance as it opens the way before me. And after more than a year, I continue to receive the gift of this dragon as a symbol that life (and the forces that animate it on this planet) is always working in my favor - even when it may seem otherwise on the surface. Like the workings of the internet, I do not know all the many steps that make it possible for this email to be created by me in my little part of the world and delivered to you in yours but I trust that - for the most part 😉 - the process will unfold as intended.

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Now maybe you’re thinking to yourself “you got all that from an encounter with a cloud?”.

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The short answer is “yes”; the longer answer is that some time ago I began consciously practicing using the power of my imagination in support of myself and how I want to feel while showing up in the world so I have developed the habit of allowing myself to make a supportive and nurturing mountain out of every smile-inducing molehill that I can.

Why? Because there was a time when that wasn’t the case; a time when I was far more inclined to use the power of my fertile imagination against myself rather than in support of my flourishing; when I had the habit of using my imagination to amplify the ways I felt bound instead of magnifying the potential to feel free.

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Here’s the thing, our minds and imaginations are powerful - new and novel solutions to long-standing and complex challenges begin in the mind and imagination of someone every single day. As Wayne Dyer once said, “Everything that exists now was once imagined.”

And that’s not only true of “someone else”, you create beautiful things out of thin air all the time - the “perfect gift” you find for your best friend; the way to “fit it all in” when there’s a ton to be done and only 24 hours in your day to accomplish it; the thoughtful card you send at just the right time; the garden you plant; the meals you plan; the children’s birthday parties you coordinate; the list goes on.

Chances are you also create not-so-beautiful things with that same mental energy - the blame you heap on yourself when you forget a friend’s birthday; the shame spiral you turn on yourself when you drop a ball or don’t show up perfectly; the litany of worst-case-scenario and boogie-men-lurking-around-the-next-corner horror stories that take root and spread in your mind; the laundry list of ways you tell yourself that you are not enough, too much, or in some other way not meeting some imaginary marker of “goodness” or “success”.

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​If this is you, you are not alone.

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We all use our imagination everyday to amplify the sparks of life that ignite around us. One of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is to begin to notice what we are supporting in our lives with the pure creative potential of our imagination.​
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B/c the seeds we nourish are the seeds that grow. We do not harvest pomegranates when we plant and nourish beets.

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What I planted with my encounter of the dragon-cloud-kind was a seed of being supported, guided, and protected. I nourished that seed by allowing myself to receive it as a sign of support rather than a random cloud formation in the sky that I happened to witness. And I have continued to harvest a sense of support, guidance and protection by revisiting this beautiful and uplifting story in my mind whenever the inspiration strikes me.

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We are free to believe that the world is a random assortment of more or less meaningless occurrences. We are free to believe that everything has meaning and is sacred. And we are free to believe anything and everything in between. ​
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For me, I have found that using my imagination to create a greater sense of connection to my world, my life, and myself instead of a greater sense of separation feels so much freer, so much lighter, and so much, well, better than when I made a habit of choosing otherwise so that's the path I choose to walk everyday as best I can.

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What about you? What’s your version of my dragon in the clouds? What uplifting stories do you allow your imagination to run wild with? Hit reply and let me know - I love to hear your stories.

Here's to turning as many heart-lifting molehills into soul-quenching mountains as we can now and always.

Sending you Love,

Tawnia

PS: 🐉 Happy Lunar New Year! I was reminded of my dragon in the clouds when I learned that this is the Year of the Dragon and was pondering what energies will be brought to the flow of the year with the dragon at the helm. I think we can expect our fierceness, our fire and our willingness to dare to be ourselves to be rewarded this year - which fits nicely with our exploration of being unbound, free and fully alive. Onward we go …

Here's what I'm up to:

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