Seeing the Good in Japan – a letter from Sendai

Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend’s home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.

During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

It’s utterly amazingly that where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, “Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another.”

Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often.

We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on. But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.

There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun. People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.

Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled. The mountains are Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.

And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.

They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend’s husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.

Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don’t. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.

Thank you again for your care and Love of me,

With Love in return, to you all,
Anne

originally seen in Ode magazine, 3/14/11

10 Life-Changing Facts About Attachment by Gail Brenner

“The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.”
~Epictetus

I have made a very interesting discovery. Whenever I have a reaction to anything – a person or situation, something someone says or does, I am attached. I am holding a belief or expectation that things should go a certain way or that a given outcome should occur. I want what I want, and in that attachment, I suffer.

The Fallout from Being Attached

I recently spoke to a very frustrated friend who had just discovered a big computer glitch. Our conversation revealed many attachments she was holding – that things that are working should stay the same, that programs shouldn’t have bugs, that her schedule for the day shouldn’t be interrupted because of this.

Sanity returned as she saw how these attachments were causing her to resist the reality of the moment.

Simply said, when we make our happiness dependent on people, money, success, possessions, or circumstances, we suffer. Attachments are sticky. Our freedom goes out the window, and we react emotionally and maneuver to get what we want and reject what we don’t want. Oh, if only the world would cater to our personal desires.

Just for a moment, imagine being free of attachments. Things come and go, but you are stable and unmoving in the midst of it all. It doesn’t mean you don’t care. In fact, in the lack of clinging, you are free to care deeply. The most intimate state of being is devoid of the separation that attachment brings.

Are You Attached?

Chance are that whenever you find yourself in reaction, you are attached. You are looking through a lens of “me” – how I think things should be, what I think should or shouldn’t happen – and then reacting when things don’t go according to your plan.

Do you find yourself feeling frustrated, angry, scared, sad? Then you are probably attached. You are stuck and not available to the comings and goings of life. Consider exploring your attachments, and re-discovering freedom, with these potentially life-changing facts.

10 Life-Changing Facts

1. Attachments to people prevent us from examining ourselves. Clinging to someone in a relationship often masks an underlying sense of lack or unworthiness that can benefit from your loving exploration. Are you willing to take the focus off the other to see what thoughts and feelings are driving you?

2. Attachments to identities keep us stuck. Are you aware of any habitual ways in which you react emotionally? See if you can pinpoint the identity you hold about yourself. Maybe it doesn’t serve you anymore, and you can give yourself the freedom to respond with greater wisdom and awareness.

3. What often underlies attachment is a fear of not being in control. Can you befriend the unknown and receive things as they happen?

4. The root of many relationship problems is that people are attached to what others should say or do. Recognize when someone is attached to how you should be. Rather than resisting and creating conflict, stay grounded in yourself. Feel compassion for the other’s fear and confusion.

5. Attachment to possessions or money is all about fear. Have as many possessions as you want, but don’t stake your happiness on them. Do your possessions define you? Deeply contemplate losing them all, and realize that you don’t really own anything.

6. Attachment to wanting what you don’t have leads to interminable unhappiness. Can you shift your orientation to appreciate what is already here?

7. Being attached to your needs makes you a victim of circumstances. Do you really need what you think you need? Maybe you are stronger and more whole than you think.

8. Not being attached brings relaxation and ease. You no longer worry about losing what you have. This doesn’t mean that you aren’t excited about having something or sad about its loss. But your underlying peace is not disturbed.

9. Attachment to beliefs and ideas is like living in a small space with many walls. Everywhere you turn, you bump into one. Can you let yourself be vulnerable and open by abandoning your treasured beliefs?

10. When all attachments fall away, what remains is reality. When we see things without the veil of our attachments, we realize life – delicious, pure, luminous, and true.

original article can be found here

Spiritual Awakening Process ~ Facing Your Ego’s Death with Jim Tolles

Continuing a rather morbid string of blog posts, I want to talk about ego death. In my ebook, Practical Spirituality, I essentially outline a gentle way to take apart your ego. At the same, time the concepts in the book are meant to help you create a lighter and more loosely held sense of self–a spiritual ego, if you will. Because anyway you cut it, while you are living in this body, you have a point of view and collected set of experiences that you express as “you.” And that’s okay. It’s just important that you know that you’re doing this, and that you can choose to change how you are when it is time to make that shift in yourself and your personality.

But before we get there, the original ego that thinks the world revolves around it or that there is no other way of living has to go. The spark of awakening can light a fire under this ego, or it can be so strong that it fissures the ego away from the soul, leaving no doubt about what is real. Everyone experiences this differently, but let’s take some time to talk about what ego death is, how it may feel, and what you can do to move through it.

My Ego’s on Fire! Just Let It Burn
Awakening struck, and for a moment, you touched beauty deep within you and without. It’s profound, but most likely, at some point, your old ego ran in to take hold of that experience. It decided to try and conceptualize it, own it, or get rid of it. The ego’s days are now numbered however.

I love Plato’s allegory of the cave. Initially, we all live in a darkened cave and have no idea what light really is. Once you step outside of that cave, you can never fully go back in again. Because you know what’s out there. It begins a process of letting go, so that you can completely leave the cave and the darkness.

Of course, many people run right back into the cave completely freaked out by all the light and beauty. It was too much. In many ways, as a teacher, I like to build up a loose framework for my students precisely because when awakening hits, I want them to have been building a spiritual ego that can be okay with all this light and beauty. Without it, the old ego goes into shutdown and denial mode. It’s not a pretty sight. And the truth of the matter is that awakening has just started to burn away the old ways of being. Much of the awakening process is a process of burning away old ego and learning how to let go. Ego death can be as smooth or as painful as our own abilities to release into it and to allow.

The Body Feels Like Its Dying
The more identified someone is with their ego, the harder this ego death can be. You may begin to have phantom pains in your body. In some ways, I feel like the ego is taking out its fear on the body. If the fear is intense enough, illnesses and disease can be manifested because your ego believes that everything really is dying. Not everything is dying, though. Just the ego. Your body is just fine.

Of course, because everything is going in six directions from Sunday for you, none of this is happening completely on its own. There’s often a whole other set of experiences all moving at once. For instance, awakening is also clearing out the painbody and all the issues that have been stuck in your body and your energetic body. The release of that pain can make someone sick, which is a natural clearing process. In the space of awakening or simply in healing, after this happens, you feel lighter, clearer, and more energetic. You may also have to be learning how to stay energetically connected or else you’re getting really drained by the world around you because so much is shifting inside you. Make no mistake about it; awakening often takes a lot of force and energy to overcome our resistance and the structures we’ve surrounded ourselves with. Consider how much energy it takes to move; if you’re in a home that’s not healthy for you, you have to move. It takes quite a bit of work to do this, and there’s just no two ways about that (although getting help makes it go smoother–subsequently, getting help and support from community and a spiritual teacher is really beneficial during awakening).

You can go to a doctor if you feel really bad. It’s always good to get checked up on, but in awakening, most modern science won’t find anything wrong. Truly, nothing wrong is happening. So, you have to make mental space to understand that what is “dying” is an old way of thinking and acting in the world.

Rebirthing Your Spiritual Ego
As I’ve alluded to, we all have egos. The spiritual ego serves spirit. In truth, when you serve spirit, you are most truly serving yourself. I’ve found that in all the ways that I’ve aligned myself with God’s plan, our plans have turned out to be the same. It becomes really easy to ask how to serve God because when I do this, I feel so much more fulfilled, happy, and connected than doing half of the stuff I used to think that I should do. In saying all of this, I am speaking from a spiritual ego. I have a perspective and set of experiences that I define as “Jim the spiritual teacher,” but I also know that this can shift and go away when it is no longer needed. Older versions of my ego were completely dug in and entrenched willing to hurt others because “I” had to get my way. Not very enlightened at all. They kicked and screamed on the way out, I don’t mind telling you. Parts of them are still kicking and screaming, but it’s much easier to be with these days as I watch old elements around fear and control dissolve.

So as traumatic and uncertain as awakening can be, if you’re in this profound shift, you need to bring intention to the new you that you want to bring into the world. Rebirthing yourself is part of the process. Everything gets rebirthed so that you can come into alignment with Truth, Love, and Beauty. It’s just how it goes. In all the ways that you resist what’s coming, you’re going to find yourself in more agony than you can possibly imagine. Trust me on this one.

And I know that this isn’t convenient. It’s never convenient to your old ego because it knows that it’s days are numbered. You are going to have to make big changes in life. The more you’ve been out of alignment with who and what you really are, the more changes you’ll have to make. That’s part of the process. While spiritual awakening isn’t a process per se, we still have to figure out how to manifest and embody that awakening in a world that doesn’t quite know what to do with awakened people yet. That takes a lot of patience, tenacity, energy, and love. It also takes a lot of courage.

Tools Assisting Ego Death
Many of the tools for doing this are much like the tools that I’ve mentioned all along. One can be writing down what your intuition is telling you to do. The spiritual information will help you to redefine who you are. If you’re supposed to be a healer, then journal about what that might look like for you. It’s okay to not know precisely, but it’s also important to engage with your imagination and intuition around how you’d be a healer.

Then you need to act on that information to begin to see what manifests and what works. A lot of stuff won’t work. This is also part of the process of trial and error. Acting on the information is a way to embody the shift coming into your life. The lower energy systems want you to do things. Being doesn’t mean sitting in meditation day and night. Being and stillness actually are very active. Mother Teresa didn’t sit around by herself doing nothing in India. The Dalai Lama tours all over the world. How you choose to consciously act brings your spiritual ego into existence, and it can make it easier to let go of the old ego.

In many ways, the transitional time is like building a bridge to another point. Some people will have such a profound shift that the old ego immediately dies, and a new one naturally arises. That’s beautiful. Obviously, I’m writing to a lot of other people because I think many people will touch beauty and just have no clue what to do with it. This is the time to explore. Because facing your ego’s death is a scary, scary thing when you have no way to understand it or a bridge to move away from it. It doesn’t have to be scary though. And hopefully after reading this blog post, you’ll understand that you are not your ego and that something really beautiful is about to give birth through you so that you can truly live your life in integrity and love.

original article can be found here

Trans-formation by Lauren of yogapoetics

Today I am remembering that beauty and truth are eternal, but that forms are not. All forms change, evolve, dissolve, re-form. That is to say, everything transforms in time, through death or dissolution. It simply is.

Yet, nothing essential can ever be lost.

 

I love the metaphor of the wave and the water. Every wave rises, crests, falls, disappears entirely. What was lost?
The form of that wave.

What was that wave made of?

We suffer unnecessarily because we believe we are the wave.

But of course, at essence, we are the water.

This is not to say that we should not become attached to forms. I think it is inevitable and beautiful that we do become emotionally attached to our own lives and bodies, our loved ones, the form of a particular relationship or work, a place… and loss and grief are an integral and necessary part of this story. Recognizing our true essence does not mean disengaging from the bonds that we form. Engaging fully with life, in the full awareness of your vulnerability, takes courage and real strength. When the time of loss is here, we must grieve. To be willing to live so openly and courageously is the best way to live, I sense. I also imagine that it is nearly impossible to live so willingly open without some sense of the eternality of the essence of things, or without awareness of the wholeness that we belong to. So much of our suffering we create ourselves in resisting loss and death. We close our bodies down energetically in fear. Hearts become dry and dim. Our minds grow rigid. We get stuck in habit patterns that don’t even serve our own happiness, let alone the happiness of others.

A teacher of mine says that to transcend is trance-ending. Another teacher says that to transcend healthfully, we do so in a way that is inclusive of all that came before rather than in a way that is dissociative. As our consciousness shifts to include perspectives that reflect a deeper truth than we could previously discern, there is yet an embrace of the more limited perspectives, and a respect for how they served us and for the particular nuances that each level of perception illuminates, but the spell of that more limited perspective is broken. As we begin to see that we are the wholeness as well as the part, it is possible to honor and love all the parts more deeply. As we transform our consciousness, it is possible to make space for fear and grief, and to feel them wholly while remaining rooted in the peace at the core. I think sometimes we remain rooted by a thread, and for all you can access it the peace at the core seems like a pipe dream, or worse, like delusion, but if you know that you don’t have to feel it or see it right now, if you even know that it might be true that at the core is peace, then in the willingness to consider this possibility there is an opening. As in the story of the man who awoke in the darkness of night to see the shadow of a fearful snake in the corner on the floor, who trembled in a panic for hours, and when a storm rolled in and a flash of lightning lit the sky and shined in through the windows, he saw… a rope coiled in the corner on the floor. And as the sky blackened once more he was no longer afraid, even though again he was in darkness. One moment of illumination can anchor us in a deeper truth, even while habit compels us to tumble back into the prevailing trance and doubt what was revealed.

Discipline = to become a disciple of the deepest truth or most adequate perspectives that you have ever accessed. To be a disciple means that we apprentice ourselves to the ongoing development of our capacity to live in integrity with our deepest awareness. This means that we are committed to the practice of surveying our consciousness, our lives, our choices, relationships, habits, and actions in order to discover where a less adequate perspective may be prevailing, and then to do the work of bringing everything into alignment with the deeper awareness, even as awareness is continuing to evolve. This can be deeply challenging at times. And it is in the challenges and contractions that we need to call on ourselves to remember what we saw in that streak of illumination — the snake was a rope — then we can gradually bring the light of that illumination into those shadowed blinds within us. I guess that this is what practicing faith is — not adherence to doctrine or hiding from fear within the fortress of orthodoxy — but reconnecting to the truths of our own moments of great love, deep clarity or intimations of a grand vista that is yet beyond our imagining. I think that faith is choosing to invest trust in what was revealed in those sublime moments, even when it seems most dim and distant and doubtful. Faith need not mean certainty. Only consideration of possibility and a willingness to remain open to it. Only humility.

With love,
Lauren

You’ll find the original here

How Do You Resist? by Gail Brenner

“No feeling is final.”
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Are you feeling stuck, out of sorts, disconnected? Are you plagued by addiction or gripped by compulsions or fear? If so, it’s a guarantee that you are resisting a part of your experience.

How do I know? Our natural state is this: clear, whole, loving, peaceful, and happy. It is the source of all our desires and the truth that we long for. It is who we are, closer than close.

In our natural state, we open to all experiences equally. We don’t avoid or suppress. When we seem to be out of touch with the essence of ourselves, we must be denying a feeling or allowing ourselves to be derailed by a belief or expectation.

When these experiences are met with love and understanding, our natural state shines through unimpeded.

Our Natural State – No Resistance

Have you ever felt completely at peace? Maybe it happened in the arms of a lover, on a walk in the woods on a bright summer day, or over coffee with a friend. Maybe it occurred when you were a child or yesterday. Maybe, like me, these episodes of deep contentment spring forth from seemingly nowhere.

At moments like these, there is no resistance. Everything is welcomed as it is, without pushing anything away. The war has ended, and you have put down your arms.

Unexamined Experiences – Resistance

But if there is disturbance, if there is an unexamined ripple or wave in the depth of you, then you are resisting. You have come to blows within yourself. A feeling or sensation in your body is appearing, and you are saying, “No!”

It’s a kind of violence. You are fighting reality, evading the present moment, cutting off a tender part of you. You are choosing separation out of fear, while turning away from the possibility of peace.

Some of us live a great portion of our lives in resistance. We are in deep – addicted to substances or work or obsessive thinking. We are afraid to be quiet or alone. We wonder why the same problems keep occurring.

Know How You Resist

We begin to untangle these areas of dissatisfaction by first recognizing how we resist, then gradually meeting the fragments of ourselves we have been avoiding.

So how do you resist?

• Are you defensive, hesitant to take responsibility and admit when you have made a mistake or hurt someone?
• Do you compulsively drink or shop, text or gossip?
• Are you too busy or preoccupied to be present with the people in your life?
• Do you worry, judge,criticize, or blame?
• Do you need to control or be controlled?
• Are you living in a mind filled with harsh and negative thoughts?

Think of yourself as an actor on a stage playing the same role over and over. You know the words and feelings so much by heart that you express them automatically without considering their origin.

But if you look behind these roles and defenses, worlds open up.

What Is Your Backstory?

No child is equipped to deal with strong feelings, and many adults don’t know how to honor the emotional life of their children. When we experience feelings as children, we often don’t have the support or know the tools to process and release them.

The most adaptive response is to send the feelings underground. We push them out of conscious awareness because they are too overwhelming to handle.

And, as a result, we develop strategies to keep them hidden. We spin stories in our minds, try to control the uncontrollable, and engage in unhealthy behaviors, all habits driven by these powerful unconscious feelings.

From Resistance to Peace

The end of resistance is the beginning of healing. Little by little, we turn and directly meet these fragmented parts of ourselves. We let go of the story about our experience, and we welcome in the feelings and physical sensations just as they are.

As psychologist Brené Brown says, we find beauty in our vulnerability. We unearth the source of the problem so it can be met with compassion. We let the unseen be seen, the disenfranchised invited in like a long-lost friend. We bring light to the dark places with so much tenderness.

Over time, we begin to notice that we feel whole, happy, and free. We are less reactive and more available. Moments of peace appear.

Find out how you resist. Let the impact of this resistance land in you, then open into yourself. Welcome every tension and contraction endlessly. Your habits will lose their fuel and begin to dissolve. And you will know yourself as the peace that you are.

See the Original Here

How to Appreciate Your Challenges by Mike Robbins

Are you facing challenges in your life or your business right now? These days, there are some real challenges facing many of us – at work, at home, in relationships, with money, with family, with housing situations, and much more.

The challenges themselves, even the most difficult ones, aren’t usually the real issue; it’s our relationship to them that causes us the most difficulty and suffering. Think of what your life, your relationships, and your career would be like if you didn’t complain about or resist challenges when they showed up? For most of us, myself included, this would make things very different and much more enjoyable.

Resisting, complaining about, or even feeling sorry for ourselves about the “bad” things that are happening is totally normal and what we’re often encouraged to do by people around us and our culture in general – whether we do it out loud with others or just in our own heads. However, these things, while understandable, don’t address the real issues, the genuine emotions we’re experiencing, or make things better for us.

I’m not advocating that we pretend everything is “fine” when it isn’t in some phony, Pollyanna way – that’s denial, which won’t help us either. However, the question in life isn’t whether or not we’ll face challenges, the question is what will we do and how will we respond in the face of the challenges that arise? Do we avoid really dealing with difficult things and learning from them by playing the role of the victim and not acknowledging our true feelings about them or do we face them directly, acknowledge our emotions, and choose to grow from the experience? It’s always up to us.

On our path of life, growth, and success, we all encounter difficulties. Many of the most successful and fulfilled people who’ve ever walked the planet have faced incredible obstcles. What if we actually appreciated these challenges? Remember, appreciating something doesn’t necessarily mean we like or enjoy it. Appreciation means that we recognize the value of it.

Here’s a list of some things we can appreciate when things get tough:

• Challenges often give us important feedback about where and who we are
• Challenges give us contrast and can help us appreciate things when they get easier
• Challenges can allow us to wake up and notice all the good things that are happening that we weren’t paying attention to
• Challenges are almost always a great opportunity for learning, growth, and improvement
• Challenges give us an opportunity to get in touch with, take responsibility for, and express our real emotions

By learning to appreciate our challenges and see the opportunities in them, we take our power back from the situations and circumstances of our lives. Our ability to appreciate difficulties, learn from them, and use them to our advantage, gives us an important insight into who we really are and how to create success and fulfillment in a conscious and deliberate way.

Action: What You Can Do

Make a list of some of the biggest challenges in your life right now. What can you appreciate about each of these difficulties? What are you learning from them? What are you able to appreciate in yourself and your life because of these things?

If you look for it, you’ll be able to find many things to appreciate about every one of them. Appreciating our challenges can allow us to accept them, learn from them, and ultimately take back our power from them. Doing this reminds us that we’re the authors of our lives – not the circumstances we’re facing.

see original entry on Mike’s blog, along with the audio, here

Dragon Taming – Believing is Seeing

We usually get distressed when we want things to be other than what they are, and we don’t have the power to change it. The difficult part is that the distress brings focus to the discomfort and makes the whole thing bigger, empowering it.

Like an itch you can’t scratch – focus on it and it becomes infuriatingly mind-numbingly awful, filling your world. Focus on watching something or reading or anything else and it fades to a dull, mild irritation.

A higher version of this understanding is that the fade out that occurs by turning away from something filling your world and triggering you emotionally, uncomfortably… it’s not permanent. It just makes things more bearable and allows us to work through them in a different manner.

That we will work through them – eventually, one way or another – isn’t up for debate. It is our nature to reach for peace, joy, prosperity and all the other wonderful things that releasing limitation brings us.

E-motion is Energy in Motion and that energy is summoned from within, somewhere. Frozen emotion like a splinter in our spirit it’s too painful to look at, or perhaps a limiting belief that defines us yet also confines us and has started to chafe – some illusion we bought into that’s revealing itself as false, but is so buried under other stuff that we can’t quite make it out what’s actually there to be looked at. Usually this is b/c we’re too busy pointing a finger at what’s immediately in front of us.

It can feel as if we can just win the argument or make the symptom go away, then we will have dealt with the illusion. No… we will have just moved the energy around, done some energy management to make ourselves more comfortable. The first cause is still there and will remain until fully looked at and accepted.

What is false can not stand and will rise for review again in the near or far future, depending on how triggered it is (i.e. how much it chafes the most recent version of you attempting to rise into expressed being).

This is a solid truth: You can run, but you can’t hide. ;) And, thank goodness! With the final viewing and acceptance of and thus dissolution of the limitation, be it a belief, a choice, a pattern, past pain, boogie man, whatever it is that’s holding us apart from ourselves… we get our power back in its fullness and get to become who it is that’s been held back by the limitation.

Within our limitations we’ll find our greatest fear AND our greatest strength, standing hand in hand, daring us to be the next highest version of the Us that has become accessible to Being, Now.

One ‘nice’ thing to know is that the outcome is a known. It takes way too much energy to avoid facing chafing illusions, and they grow exponentially more powerfully when ignored in favor of a paper dragon. The dragon will get bigger and bigger and bigger, until it finally eats us alive and there is silence and we finally know, sitting in its belly, that there is no dragon.

Illusion is extremely clever, very smart, but our Selves have all the time there is. One day, even if it’s at the end of the creation, we will finally accept ourselves in full. Maybe we’ll even laugh at the big dragon we managed to create for ourselves, in whose belly we’ve been tortured alchemical into finally turning lead into gold. The pressure that yields a diamond…eventually.

If we’re lucky and willing, however, we’ll turn and face the dragon in little pieces, before or even after it’s already coalesced and reared its head in the present ‘real’ world’. We do this by exploring our energy flows, where it catches and hooks, where it moves freely… Hooks and catches (points of chafe) mark limitations.

More literally, we can look into the past for those memories we lived that still hold pain OR any other uncomfortable sensation; they are the bits and pieces that coalesce to form dragons. Our lives hold the key – everything is there like a map to buried treasure, just sitting there awaiting the time we choose to take a look and begin to decipher its secrets.

It could be said that that’s what life is for, aside from enjoying the magic and wonder of our own ability as creators: Showing us ourselves and what limitations (and wonders) we’ve decided we believe in. Belief made manifest. Choice revealed – the ultimate in free will.

Seeing isn’t Believing…it’s actually the other way around. Believing is Seeing.

Insights from the Other Side

NDE Experience as Described
by Mellen-Thomas Benedict

 

 

 

The Road to Death

In 1982 I died from terminal cancer. The condition I had was inoperable, and any kind of chemotherapy they could give me would just have made me more of a vegetable. I was given six to eight months to live. I had been an information freak in the 1970′s, and I had become increasingly despondent over the nuclear crisis, the ecology crisis, and so forth. So, since I did not have a spiritual basis, I began to believe that nature had made a mistake, and that we were probably a cancerous organism on the planet. I saw no way that we could get out from all the problems we had created for ourselves and the planet. I perceived all humans as cancer, and that is what I got. That is what killed me. Be careful what your world view is. It can feed back on you, especially if it is a negative world view. I had a seriously negative one. That is what led me into my death. I tried all sorts of alternative healing methods, but nothing helped.

So I determined that this was really just between me and God. I had never really faced God before, or even dealt with God. I was not into any kind of spirituality at the time, but I began a journey into learning about spirituality and alternative healing. I set out to do all the reading I could and bone up on the subject, because I did not want to be surprised on the other side. So I started reading on various religions and philosophies. They were all very interesting, and gave hope that there was something on the other side.

On the other hand, as a self-employed stained-glass artist at the time, I had no medical insurance whatsoever. So my life savings went overnight in testing. Then I was facing the medical profession without any kind of insurance. I did not want to have my family dragged down financially, so I determined to handle this myself. There was not constant pain, but there were black-outs. I got so that I would not dare to drive, and eventually I ended up in hospice care. I had my own personal hospice caretaker. I was very blessed by this angel who went through the last part of this with me. I lasted about eighteen months. I did not want to take a lot of drugs, since I wanted to be as conscious as possible. Then I experienced such pain that I had nothing but pain in my consciousness, luckily only for a few days at a time.

The Light of God

I remember waking up one morning at home about 4:30 am, and I just knew that this was it. This was the day I was going to die. So I called a few friends and said goodbye. I woke up my hospice caretaker and told her. I had a private agreement with her that she would leave my dead body alone for six hours, since I had read that all kinds of interesting things happen when you die. I went back to sleep. The next thing I remember is the beginning of a typical near-death experience. Suddenly I was fully aware and I was standing up, but my body was in the bed. There was this darkness around me. Being out of my body was even more vivid than ordinary experience. It was so vivid that I could see every room in the house, I could see the top of the house, I could see around the house, I could see under the house.

There was this light shining. I turned toward the light. The light was very similar to what many other people have described in their near-death experiences. It was so magnificent. It is tangible; you can feel it. It is alluring; you want to go to it like you would want to go to your ideal mother’s or father’s arms.

The Importance of Allowing Space for Vulnerability

This is such an awesome video :) I watched it, then kept finding myself wanting to go back and hear exactly what she said, again! So, I decided that for sanity’s sake I’d watch the whole thing again, and this time take notes. ;) And here they are! Enjoy :)

• Lean into the discomfort
• We as humans crave connection
• Shame unravels connection
  • Shame can be defined as the fear of disconnection
• The underpinning of this shame and fear is excruciating vulnerability (fear of being truly seen)
  • Connection necessarily involves being seen
• It all comes down to the sense of worthiness
  • People who have a strong sense of love and belonging (i.e. connection) believe they’re worthy of it
  • What keeps us out of connection is that we fear we’re not worthy of connection
• What people who feel worthy of connection have in common is a sense of courage
  • Courage: (the original Latin definition) To tell the story of who you are with your whole heart
• These people who feel worthy of connection have three things in common:
  • the courage to be imperfect
  • the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then others
  • authenticity
    • They were willing to let go of who they thought they should be, to be who they actually are
• They also fully embraced vulnerability, believing what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. Not comfortable, nor excruciating – vulnerability as just necessary for connection and growth.
• They had the willingness to move forward while vulnerable
  • When you’re vulnerable, the ability to control and predict becomes necessarily negated (if you knew, you wouldn’t be vulnerable)
• Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness
  • It’s also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging and love
• We tend to numb vulnerability instead of feeling it (buying stuff, food, pills, alcohol, whatever)
  • Unfortunately, we can’t selectively numb just the bad stuff
    • We unintentionally numb the good stuff, too
• When we feel vulnerable we also try to make everything that is uncertain, certain. (religion, politics)
• The more vulnerable, the more afraid, the more we try to numb and/or make things certain
  • Leads to blaming
  • Blaming has been defined as a way to discharge pain and discomfort
• Vulnerability can also lead us to trying to perfect everything (our selves, our jobs, our lives, our kids and those around us)
  • We try to get whatever it is to fit a chosen, certain image that is not vulnerable
• Feeling vulnerable can lead us into pretending that what we do doesn’t impact/effect people
  • We do this in our personal lives, corporate, big business, etc.
• The key? Exposure – let ourselves be seen deeply and vulnerably
  • Lean into joy and gratitude
  • Act, create, and love without guarantees
  • Believe that we’re enough

The Vacation Test

Just got back from Vermont! :D Went up to Smuggler’s Notch ski resort for a week’s stay. :) My hubby took the picture to the left there from the ski-lift! You can see more of his awesome work on his site.

For me, vacations aren’t to relax… they’re times of intense testing of new paradigm sets. 8) At least during this period of my life ;)

Going on vacation means I’m in a new environment, and I am in enforced close constant contact with someone else all the time. (I’m the kind of person who NEEDS their alone time ;) ) I don’t have all my comforts of home – my books, crystals, personally set space-vibe… all I have is what I’ve constructed around my Self as my most recently transformed Way of Being.

All of these things create the perfect environment within which to very carefully keep tabs on how well my new Way of Being is holding up after all the work and adjustment I’ve done since the previous vacation or time of testing.

Depending on how well that Way of Being holds up, a ‘vacation’ can be quite a trial, lol – everything is heightened and pushed to the limits of tolerance for me, almost by design.

However! This time for the first time things really began to turn around! I saw the triggers that normally would freak me out, and instead of reacting I was able to remain aware and conscious enough to respond and maintain my balance. I did so for almost an entire week! Considering where I was in August last year, this pretty much qualifies as a carefully crafted miracle.

I lost it toward the end… Weariness due to only getting a few hours sleep a night for a couple days along with going on day nine of my hubby and I practically living in each other’s laps really pushed things right to the edge. That’s when the dregs of last remaining deepest darkest fear stuff finally came floating to the surface.

The Monk and the Monkey

http://vimeo.com/14441514

A determined young boy, Ragu, is sent by his master on his final quest to become a monk. A seemingly simple task becomes an unexpected challenge for Ragu as he discovers the real value of his quest.

© 2010 Brendan Carroll & Francesco Giroldini. Music by Erez Koskas.
Ringling College of Art + Design.

This short little video is wonderful :) It really says a lot about life, integrity, and the power of remaining true to your own values no matter what in its short four and a half minutes. A total heart warmer, and well worth a look :) Enjoy!

Love :)
- Dawn

Love says, “You’ve got two choices…”

One of the primary qualities of Love is acceptance. To accept something doesn’t mean you have to make whatever it is a part of your life – it just means you acknowledge it, and accept that it Is.

This is one thing we’re all capable of doing…with a little practice. :) It’s well worth it, because things become very peaceful and serene and just plain easier when you do.

By doing so, you empower yourself with a very special kind of awareness – awareness through the eyes of love.

Such an awareness reveals that Love is always asking us to make the same choice, no matter what we encounter. Embrace it, or Let it Go.

Acknowledgment, followed by acceptance of what is – whatever it may be – reveals those two choices.

When we choose to embrace something, we notice it come into our awareness, acknowledge and accept, and then intensify our focus upon it with gratitude and appreciation, reveling in the joy it brings us during its time in our lives.

When we choose to let something go, we just notice it come into our awareness, acknowledge and accept, then detach and choose another point of focus.

Love says, “It all Is. If it’s not for you, it’s for someone else on their path to embracing more love. That’s life. To embrace more love in your life, focus on what inspires you, and let the rest go.”

(On a personal note: Consider giving this accepting what is thing a try! :) It’s incredibly rewarding (speaking from experience). And, also speaking from experience – be gentle with yourself. I’ve fallen off the loving acceptance wagon and discovered I was being grumpy and complaining about something many a time! And ya know? Sometimes you just gotta get your grump on ;)

However, it ends up that when you practice this long enough, it begins to become an ingrained habit that sticks with you even when you’re triggered, tired or hurting, or just plain tempted to freak out. ;) HIGHLY worth the time and effort. )

Judgment and Why it Hurts Us

Each time we make a judgment we distance ourselves from that which we have judged and believe it or not that is usually US!  Often I find myself judging in someone else what I have been guilty of myself. 

I recently heard someone say ( and I am sorry but I cannot recall who ) that we ‘cannot recognize in someone else what we do not possess our self”.  That really made me think and some of what I thought did not make me feel so good! 

For example a few weeks ago while in the grocery store I was standing in front of some products trying to decide what to buy when all of the sudden a woman coming from the opposite direction stopped her cart right in front of me ( actually I was now facing her back !) and she began gazing at the same shelf of products.  I thought to myself ~ how rude!!  what am I ?? Invisible! I really didn’t know what to say so I said nothing, she picked up her jar of whatever it was and moved on along completely unaware of her behavior. 

Of course, I am now fuming and then the statement above entered my mind and it occurred to me that I have probably been guilty of the very same thing and was just as unaware as she was.  How many times have I gone to the grocery store in the midst of worrying about a family member who is home sick or a loved one who is struggling so I am completely distracted and in my own little world of worry. 

Two things happened in that moment, one I was able to let it go~ no hard feelings and two I recognized that I often assign blame or judgment to a behavior without knowing anything else about the situation.  I know this seems small but in truth it is pretty huge.  I think we judge a lot of things including ourselves without really knowing the back story as it were.  For me, I can tell you that I have let friends go because of situations that in hindsight I realize I judged incorrectly. 

What I have come to learn and hopefully not too late is that judgment hurts and it hurts because when I judge I am coming from a place that is not in alignment with my own truth because in truth I have at times been distracted, I have  been deceptive and yes, I have even been rude.  I may not have known it but I betcha someone somewhere found something I did rude or offensive in fact I am certain of it.  Would I want to lose a friend over a simple misunderstanding or be perceived as rude just because I was so worried about a loved one that I could not see what was right in front of me??  NO.

In closing, I guess the moral of this story is that we are all more alike than we are different and it feels a whole lot better to give someone the benefit of the doubt.  I know I feel better not judging, just allowing and accepting others as I would hope they would allow and accept me.  I think you will too!

 

Here’s to seeing the similarities in one another, Suzanne

Active Loving

“If equal affection cannot be, let the one more loving be me.”

- from Oprah’s Favorite Quotes

This quote became something of a mantra for me for many reasons and for many years.  Frequently I found myself in situations where for no apparent reason people were just not being kind.  That part of me that was becoming aware started to take note and began trying to figure out if it was something I was doing, saying or possibly conveying to the other person that was prompting this behavior.  I had, by this time, also heard that most communication is non-verbal in fact I believe the numbers break down to an incredible 93% of all communication is actually NON-verbal!  So, with that in mind I thought if this is the case then maybe I am just being a certain way and that way was clearly not working.

I began dissecting the above quote and really started to look at what ‘more loving’ meant and how I could be that.  Sometimes for me it meant remaining quiet, sometimes it meant changing the way I was standing, the way I was listening or the sound of my voice.   I noticed that something as simple as smiling or making clear eye contact would often make a difference.  At other times it would require an overall attitude adjustment on my part.   Sometimes all it meant was that the other person was having a really bad day and their behavior had absolutely nothing to do with me.

This small group of words with such a powerful message quite literally changed my life because I can now say with all honestly that most of my dealings with people are genuine and pleasant.

Love changes everything and Love itself is simple, yet active loving is not always so simple.  It takes a desire and a willingness to look within, an ability to be honest about what you find and the diligence to go about changing it.  But, it is so worth it because every exchange we have with another has an impact, the proverbial pebble in the pond which creates the ripple effect. Let your pebble be powerful, let your pebble be loving.

Love,
Suzanne

The Power of Gratitude in Relationships

I wanted to take a minute to talk about relationships and gratitude. And how to be grateful when you are not happy! Seems impossible doesn’t it? In fact IT IS because in my opinion the two cannot coexist. You cannot be in a state of gratitude and be UNhappy.

Try it ~ take a second and think of something that you are grateful for, it could be something really big or something really small ~ right now I am grateful to have a few minutes to sit and write this even though my husband is outside trying to get his pressure washer started and creating a heckuva lot of noise in the process.

That just made me smile because it reminded me that I am grateful for him, I am grateful that he has the desire to even start the pressure cleaner, I am grateful that I can sit here and be annoyed that he is outside causing a commotion because it means that he is motivated versus being depressed about any number of things he could be depressed about. Clearly he is also choosing to be in gratitude ~ it is as simple as that.

Because we choose to be grateful it opens us up to happiness, to seeing things from a different perspective. I am not minimizing pain or depression, believe me I know what those feel like and I am not saying it is easy but I am saying it is possible to change your focus and choose gratitude.

Try it, it changes everything!

Shall I say it???? YES!
In Gratitude,
Suzanne

Google Learns Mindfulness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc

Okay, this is the very first Sparklie being shared on this blog, and for very good reason. :)

First off, it’s awesome.

Secondly, it’s just a really good look at beginning with meditation done by a guy who is easy to understand.

The video is a little over an hour long, and during the talk he teaches you some basics and even walks through a few things. Definitely a video for the Now generation.

Oh, and the book the guy wrote as mentioned in the video at the meditation? You can find it here. :) Enjoy! :D

Why Telling Someone What They’re Doing Wrong Doesn’t Work

When I first came into my intuitive/empathic gifts, I was able to see people’s dysfunctional patterns almost like I had a blueprint. As far as, I could watch them react to something, see the energy move through their system, see it get stuck and why it got stuck and why they were so upset and why what they were trying to do wasn’t actually accomplishing what they wanted to do, and why it was causing them physical distress and creating disease and…you get the idea.

I figured if I could see this stuff, that meant it was my job to share! I mean, wouldn’t you want to know something like that? In theory, I think we’d prolly all say yes, but in reality it’s a big no…

People get very angry when you try to tell them something like that. Not only are they not appreciative, they get downright hostile!

What I discovered and finally had to accept was that our ways of being and moving in the world and relating with others are ours. We came to them in our very own way in our very own time by virtue of our very own experiences. In a very real way we identify with them personally because they represent the choices we made at some point along the way.

To randomly tell someone what they’re doing is wrong because you can see it’s wrong is to basically tell them they as a person are incorrect. You’re telling them there’s something flawed in their person-hood. Not only do people not take that well, they usually dig in, fight you, and hold on to that way even tighter as a defense.

Just outright telling someone also doesn’t help even if they do accept it because we never learn much by being told a thing, especially when it’s about our personal choices and ways of being. To tell them because you KNOW for sure there’s a better way, robs them of the full power of learning it on their own, in their own way, in their own time, and trips up the natural unfolding process. We are alive to learn by experience, not to be told, or even to just figure it out – we have to experience it, to earn it, in order to own it.

I finally learned how to shut off that ability to see without trying, and now I only turn it on when working with a client, and only in regard to whatever they specifically came to see me about :)

If they’ve asked, then you can give, and they will hear and apply and experience in a new way. In any other space,  it just ends up coming across as judgmental, and in truth is disrespectful of the person’s own (w)holistic journey and right to live their life.

Instead, consider looking for good stuff about them and make a note of it – even if it’s only in your own head. The boost in positive energy coming in their direction will help them shift through into a healthier space a whole lot faster than telling them what they’re doing wrong, any day. :)

Karma Redefined

When it comes to the question of Karma and how it works, it’s not, in my mind, a ‘you smacked someone and they felt pain so now you must feel the equivalent’. Not at all… God/All That Is is much more loving and all encompassing than that. It’s more that a situation was co-created through ignorance, revealing the ignorance and grounding the desire in your own soul to fully learn and understand what was done and the part you played.

IF were really and truly fully aware and in total understanding of the relationship we have with All That Is, we would never cause another pain. If we do so, it’s because there’s something we need to learn, something we’re as yet unaware of. And so a record is kept so we can keep track of our areas of study. It’s not an eye for an eye. It’s an understanding for a misunderstanding.

Victim and victor switch roles over lifetimes, or whatever, until they earn, by right of conscious realization and demonstration in real life of the principles, to not have to do it anymore. As long as we don’t learn, we don’t earn, and we continue to experience. It’s what life school is based on – all of it. :) It’s awesome. ;)

Put simply, you and I are one. You cut my arm off, that means you just cut your own arm off. Whatever misunderstanding could possibly lead to that needs to be realized and fully understood. If it had been understood from the getgo, you never would have cut your own arm off, lol – so, together, we learn, from our various perspectives as individual sparks of the Creator’s essence coming from different angles.

Every unique aspect of God must learn this individually, and each totally new spark of soul that’s struck off the original whole gains the benefit of all that has been learned before it. Thus you have new souls being born that are amazing from the start – they are here to learn about new aspects that haven’t been learned before.

The reason we’re ascending, in my understanding, is because we’ve just about played this particular game out to its fruition. Learned all of it, you know? I’ve even heard it said that we’ve so learned all of it that there is no such thing as additional karmic debt (aka something you need to learn added to your list) at all anymore – just a remembering.

Time for a new gameboard, we as a combination soul of all souls that have ever gone before in this dimension and in this space have played this one out in all its many aspects as far as it can go. We wanna go play something new, now. :)