When the branches are bare, and the skies are overcast, and the air is frigid, the cardinals flit around as if it is Spring. Their eye popping color against all the neutral tones always makes me catch my breath. They may be my favorite bird.

They mate for life, it is reported. They constantly stay in contact as they go about their daily bird chores. You can easily hear the call and response. So touching, that devotion. I have seen the female at the feeder chowing down just fine but when the male comes to join her, she stops eating and he feeds her! Apparently, he loves to feel needed and she, being a wise woman bird knows to give him that. Truth is, she does need him, because (as I imagine it), she loves him. That is sufficient to qualify as 'need.'

So all this talk of birds, and yet, in the title, I say 'we are the color.' What I mean by that is that our ability to feel our heart's fire gives us a color I imagine to be similar to the vividness of the red of the cardinal. Our heart's fire is lit by so many different things, but always, it is about the passion we feel in response to Life Itself. Different seasons afford us different passions. It is now winter so, as we channel our inner cardinal, our color will flare up and create both warmth and radiance. You may not know this, but it is exactly the strength of what you are feeling in your inner heart that helps others to feel the color of life. Especially in the season of the sap having gone down into the roots of the trees. We underestimate our impact on each other. As I said in the title, we are the color.

Can you stand it? Can you take it? Can you abide seeing your true beauty? Your true grace and love and power? Few people can.

"But I'm flawed", you say. Then you add, "severely flawed." I laugh and say "me too." But there is a difference. I KNOW the difference between a personality and a Soul.

How brave of us, to come into a state of forgetting who we really are and being willing to do the endless work of getting a personality to get into shape and do right. It is endless work, and, angels that we are, we never tire of trying to do better.

But I am here to tell you, if you could see your Soul, really see it, you would have so much forbearance for your so-called short-comings and how long it feels like it takes to shift and merge with your Divine Center. What's more, you would begin to lighten up and find your flaws such a minor note compared to the bigger truth of your TRUE identity, the you you were before you came into form.

How can you manage to see your Soul? That is the rub. I think the answer is, it happens by Grace, and when you are willing to have your whole world shift forever.

We are in this amazing energetic field of shifting, even as I write this on Dec. 23, 2012. For the first time in my whole life, in a meditation yesterday, I saw my Soul. I can tell you this. It will be a shock to your system. But it is time, and there is no going back, once it happens.

In the meantime, love your flaws. They make you interesting, and  . . .surprise surprise, frequently you are loved because of them, not in spite of them. That is one of life's great mysteries.

Everything you do, think, feel and say impacts everything that exists. Now THAT is hard to wrap our head around. Little ol' me? How could I have that much influence? Well, you do.

I point this out not to give you the heebie jeebies about all "those thoughts" you had, or those secret feelings you thought were being kept safe inside. There is probably little to nothing you have felt or thought that isn't quite simply part of the human condition. No need to lose sleep over those things.

What I would dearly love to prompt in you is an altogether different awareness. If I may, please consider the following regarding the impact you are constantly having. Every fleeting moment of happiness, gratitude, amazement, inspiration, triumph, amusement, joy, spontaneity, reverence, upliftment, affection, tenderness, compassion, ardor, passion, forgiveness, freedom, hope, faith, charity, benevolence, generosity, trust, self acceptance, patience, kindness, mischievousness, insightfulness, sensuality, celebration, remembrance, resonance . . . these things are what your wake primarily consists of. These feelings and expressions are what you are constantly donating to Life at  Large. Because these aspects can be fleeting, they easily do not register as a gift you are both receiving and giving. Anything we judge in ourselves (think black robes, a scowl, a gavel and sitting up above us looking down), we tend to give a huge amount of heft and attention.

If only we knew, REALLY knew, what good we constantly wrought. Well, the water knows and it spreads what we donate far and wide, and that is a good thing. Never underestimate what those droplets are up to.

In life as in fiction, the bigger they come, the harder they fall, and when they do . . the one's we adulate and admire and believe we want to emulate, it stuns us. How can this be? How is it that smart people make such dumb mistakes.

Right there, calling anything a mistake is in and of itself problematic. We are here having experiences in human form to learn from, all we can, first hand, not just from books and theories. Parents lament when their children do not learn from the experience of others, but is that really learning?

Life is all about dealing with temptation and the dialogue between our better angels and the parts of us that yearn to know what something is like from first hand experience. There are choices we could make that would turn our lives into tragedy so I am not advocating by any stretch caving into temptation willy nilly but I am suggesting that hanging out at the edge of it may be a very honest and empowering place to be for gaining more self knowledge.

When there is betrayal, who is the culprit, the fault bearer? What if you refuse to draw a conclusion and just allow, we are all here to figure ourselves out as best we can and learn (hopefully) from the experiences that impacted us the most.

We are animal. We are angel. We are instinctual. We are rational. We are evolving. We are shedding and releasing. We are having about as complicated a life as can be imagined and showing tremendous courage by be willing to be a player on this stage. Apples and temptations aside, I suggest we cut ourselves a lot of slack.