On a hot summer day, the thought of diving into a secret shaded cooling pool of water feels so freeing as the still summer heat fights the flow of life and discourages inner and outer activity and vitality.

Sometimes I feel like my inner life is hot, sticky, breathless and unmoving.  I need thoughts that cool me down and bath my soul with flowing waters. Sometimes meditating on a word that is beautiful and inspiring offers a flow of inspiration to my lazy, hazy summer soul.

Today I meditated on "fluency." I love saying this onomatopoetic word.  Flu - en - cy has such flow to its sounds. Flu sounds like a graceful stream that never ends. En seems to create a soft containment for the stream.  Cy creates an image of a waiting sea.

Rooted in the Latin word for flow, fluency in the Imagine Self context becomes the quality of self-fluency.  Certainly the graceful stream of self-imagination never ends. The core of being human offers soft guidance to the flowing awareness of self. We each need to hold the image of the welcoming destination of becoming I.

I invite you to cool your summer soul with a creative swim toward the sea of self-fluency.

The dictionary offers  several sensitive meanings for fluency that can guide you to the sense of self that you long for:

Let's look at each of these meanings in relationship to personal meaning.

• a skill at speaking a language with ease and familiarity and nuance

Imagine having at the tip of your tongue the language of your own being that speaks the truth of who you are in the moment.  Imagine knowing yourself so well that the slightest fluctuation or undulation of self immediately finds  imaginative expression.

There is an exercise I love bringing when I work with groups.  I ask everyone to come up with seven words.  Three nouns, three verbs, and one preposition.  I encourage them to choose creatively such as

• to speak articulately and accurately

Imagine being clear, well-formed and on the mark about each of the myriad aspects of yourself. If you could speak fluently about yourself, people could "get" you! You could "get" you. You would be received and understood because every expression would be the truth and without error.

More and more often, I find myself questioning myself.  Is this truly what I meant? what I feel? what I want?  Or am I being lazy in my self-expression by relying on old identities, expectations or habits. Are my perceptions, thoughts and feelings about myself complete, beautiful and transparent?

How articulate are you in expressing yourself?  How accurate are the expressions?

• to move with grace

Imagine moving gracefully through your inner world? If you are not graceful inwardly, you will never be graceful outwardly. Just think of how water flows. It is always graceful, even when as fierce as class 5 whitewater.

Water responds to its environment as it moves over, under, through, around. How graceful are you as you move through your life and your imagination?

• the degree of flow

Just how fluent are you about yourself? What is the degree of self-knowledge you possess as you move through life? The more you know about  being human, the more you can become fluent in being I.

What is your fluency in the qualities of successfully being human? Are you fluent in the language of selfhood? Are you flowing gracefully to a purer image of your true self?

The summer of the soul is about standing strongly (fluently) in the world and in yourself.  Balance is the source of this powerful fluency.

How articulate and accurate are you in the meaning of balance in your sense of self?

If you became more familiar in the nuanced language of balance (and imbalance) could you move with more grace through your life? Could you increase the degree of flow in the center of your being?

How could your fluency of balance change your life?

Would you like to have more balance in

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