 | |
| |
| Message date: 06/28/2009 | ||
| Look to this space from now on, it will contain a new message every day. This message comes from a higher source, a place of deep connectedness and the more unified state of mind. These messages will contain information and intention so that reading them will teach you something on more than one level. You will receive understandings of the truth for your conscious mind as well as information that connects with your higher mind. From time to time there will be teachings on how to connect with this information yourself. So here is the first of these messages. You are here because you are ready to become more conscious and awakened. You are ready to take full responsibility for your life and spiritual evolution. An exciting and rewarding path lies before you. From now on it will help you to remember that there is only one mind, one god, if you like, one power and that power is creating you and you are using that power to create your world. This is not an easy concept to grasp in the beginning, but it is fundamental to where we are going. So re-read that and remember it. | ||
| Message date: 06/29/2009 | ||
| Public message: So many people are struggling at some level with life. With some it is at a very basic survival level; with others it is more of a struggle with themselves or with relationships. In the end it leads to so many people feeling unhappy with their lives. It is so important for you to know that this is not necessary. You do not need to struggle. The problems you are trying to solve, the things you want and think you need are all available. The key to this sounds simple and it is simple, but, because it is so radically different from what we have been taught, it is hard to fully accept and live. The key is this: as I said before, you are one with god or whatever you choose to call the one creative power, and that all the answers lie within you, not outside of you. You cannot solve your problems by changing the world around you or the people you have relationships with. You can only change yourself, the way you think, the way you know the world, and how you experience your connection with your higher power. Observe today how much you want to change the things around you and see how powerless this leaves you. See if you can find a belief or an idea within you that you could change instead and see how that empowers you. That is how true change will happen in your life. | ||
| Message date: 06/30/2009 | ||
| Public Message: All human beings have access to a higher source of information than is commonly believed. Because you are one with god, you have access to the mind of god. In the past, access to this higher source has been the privilege of mystics and people who devoted their whole lives to cultivating this connection. The human race has reached a stage of evolution where this knowledge can be accessed with a little discipline and practice. This information is commonly thought of as intuition. Some people describe it as messages from angels and other labels, but now it is going to become an additional human sense in addition to the other five senses. Consider your own feelings about this level of information and if you have had experiences of intuition or foresight or coincidence. Look for it around you. You begin to see that people frequently use this level of information unconsciously. If you have been skeptical about this that is fine. But we are going to learn to use this for the benefit of our own lives. | ||
| Message date: 07/01/2009 | ||
| Public message: Access to your higher source is a process of letting go of thought and any ideas you have about how it would feel, look or happen. It is a subtraction process, not an addition process. You are stopping your mind from being in charge, from blocking your view, so to speak. Or you can think of your mind as something that produces clouds that obscure your view of the sky or stars or sun. And the way for you to restore your vision is to be still and calm your mind until the clouds dissolve. This is not a doing process; this is a sitting and waiting and letting it happen process. And so the first task is to learn how to sit quietly, focus on letting go of thought, letting go of any distraction other than quietness and stillness. For many people, a useful image is to focus on your heart and to feel a light around your heart. Focus all your attention around that light. As you focus your attention there, imagine just letting your mind rest. Imagine the clouds dissipating and your view expanding. Practice this every day, creating a space for the information to come. If nothing else, this will be a very healthy practice for you, for it connects you with your heart and with your more expanded self. | ||
| Message date: 07/06/2009 | ||
| Today we start to explore the idea of self-responsibility. One of the greatest causes of unhappiness is feeling powerless to change your situation. Very many people feel trapped and powerless in their lives. The truth is that what is happening in our lives at any given point is not the cause of unhappiness. It is our response, the way we think about what is happening, that causes the unhappiness, not the actual circumstances. It is simply our thoughts and beliefs. This may seem hard to believe for many people, but how can one explain how one person in a Nazi prison camp can be happy while another would not, and yet their circumstances are the same. Some people can appear can appear to have anything and everything they want and still be unhappy. Others have virtually nothing and be completely happy. This would seem to indicate that it is not the external world that governs happiness and that is indeed true. A happy, peaceful or joyful person knows that they can choose to be happy in any given situation. This does not mean that they like or necessarily be in a given situation, but that does mean that they have to be unhappy. They can choose to view the situation as temporary and they are doing what they can to change it. This can lead to peace of mind. It is the choice of thoughts and responses to any situation that governs happiness. This is what self-responsibility is about; about knowing that it is you that chooses to be happy or not, no matter what your external circumstances are. | ||
| Message date: 07/07/2009 | ||
| The idea of taking responsibility for your happiness often seems impossible or ridiculous to many people. Many people are determined to blame others for their unhappiness and their problems. If you look carefully at their lives you will see that this blaming does not help them at all and they often feel unhappier as time goes by. Those that decide to take responsibility, to accept it, are more likely to feel happy as time goes by. It is not to say that they do not have moments of unhappiness, discomfort, or pain but they are more likely to return to some sort of peace and happiness if they take resonsibility for that. What does that mean to take responsibility? It means that when you become aware of uncomfortable or bad feelings you recognize that these are an indication that you need to change something within you, not something outside of you. That something is most likely your thoughts and beliefs at any given moment about what is happening around you. It is important to understand that the concepts of good and bad or right or wrong are simply mental ideas, not factual truth. In reality there is nothing bad or wrong. This concept may seem startling or nonsensical but it is the key to understanding how to create the life you want. It is too big of a subject to go into fully right now. We will leave that for later. Understand for now that if you judge what is happening around you or judging someone or yourself as bad or wrong, you will feel unhappy. When you know the truth, which is that everybody is doing the best they can at any given point, it is easier to accept events and let go of judgment and feel better. This doesn't come easily to many people in the beginning. To let go of judgment seems almost impossible. But it is a most important practice. Observe during the day how many times you need to find fault, need to make somebody less good than you, or yourself less good than somebody else. Observe how that leaves you feeling. Does that leave you feeling good? Then try to view the same event or person or yourself from the perspective that they are good and doing the best that they can, and did not intentionally set out to make you feel bad. See if that makes you feel any different. | ||
| Message date: 07/09/2009 | ||
| One of the most important understandings you will need to help you get to where you want to be is that you are the source of everything in your life. What we tend to call reality is merely a story, a way that our minds have of explaining energy flows and shifts. The human race has agreed to interpret what it experiences in certain ways so that colors are recognized, shapes, sounds. But in reality all these are are vibrations. Because we are one with god, inseparable from god, we have full creative power to create our world around us. We are doing this in every moment. We are creating everything. You can view that as attracting also. We are attracting vibration into our world. It is easier in some sense to see it as attracting when it comes to other people, but the fact is that whatever exists in our life is simply because of our creative connection with source. We bring people into our lives to help us move to the next step. Sometimes it seems that these people are a negative influence on our life but in fact they are there for a very specific reason to help us overcome some negative aspect of ourselves. It is crucial that we understand this about the world. The law of attraction is working every moment and so what you see around you is a reflection of your thoughts, feelings, beliefs. You are attracting into your life whatever you believe should be there. Part of this concept is our inseparability from god or spirit or source. But it is important to know this truth and to experience it. One experiences it in a number of ways, but the most common is through meditation practice. People have had this experience on psychoactive drugs or in break-through moments experienced by people who wake up transformed one day. The first step is to understand that this is the truth and to remind yourself of it all the time. Understanding will come before the experience of it in most cases. Make this a goal to continue to remind yourself of this truth and to work towards the experience of it. | ||
| Message date: 07/10/2009 | ||
| Let us examine the effects of our thinking on our lives. We have said that we are creating the world around us in any given moment; both positive and negative experiences come directly from what we are creating or attracting. This applies to all of our thoughts and beliefs. It is important to know that not all of our beliefs are conscious. We are not necessarily aware of some of the beliefs that we hold. The unconscious beliefs can be very powerful and more often override conscious beliefs. For example, let us say that a person consciously believes that they are a good person and worthy of a good life, but their life experiences do not match with what they expect. This means that more than likely they have an unconscious belief that they are somehow bad and not deserving of a good life. The unconscious mind has a powerful effect on our power of attraction and creation. So when you have worked on your thoughts and beliefs and are not experiencing the kind of results you would expect, you can safely assume there are unconscious or hidden beliefs at work. You can pretty easily discover the nature of the beliefs you need to change by looking at what is appearing in your life. This also applies to your conscious thinking. You may find yourself thinking thoughts like, "I never get what I want". A thought like this is a powerful determinant of your experience and will pretty much ensure you won't get what you want. What you give energy to is what you get. If you focus on what's missing in your life you will get more of that. If you focus on what's wrong with the world you will get more of that. Whatever you put your energy into is what you will see. Changing your conscious thoughts and beliefs is the first step for getting what you want. From there, judging by the results you get, you can discover whether there are unconscious or hidden beliefs that need attending to, also. So start now by being as conscious as possible of what you are thinking and change any negative thoughts into positive thoughts as soon as possible. | ||
| Message date: 07/13/2009 | ||
| The most important aspect of changing and creating the life you want is learning to connect deeply with yourself and your Source. It is of the utmost importance that you have some daily practice where you nurture, develop and strengthen your connection with god. Some of you have been doing this for years and are well established in a practice of meditation or prayer or other kinds of spiritual practices. Others of you may have tried and not had success or not even tried. It is now time to begin a daily practice if you want to really see the changes you want and achieve the life you want. The key to a successful daily practice is that you actually get some pleasure or satisfaction or reward from it. And this is not always the case especially in the beginning. Sometimes it takes a while to find a method that works best for you. For some it will be a Buddhist or Zen meditation, for some a yoga practice, for some might be New Thought prayer work. There are many, many ways of connecting. If you are finding that you have tried one and it doesn't work, consider your beliefs about this practice and other practices. Perhaps you are taking a narrow view of what is right or wrong, good or bad, so have ruled out a practice that in fact might be very useful. At any rate, most practices will feel a bit like hard work in the beginning. It can be useful just to set a smaller time aside than you would have thought necessary in the beginning, just to make sure you do the practice every day. It is much easier to build a practice than to dive into a full practice from the start. So start with even a minute in the morning, or five or ten minutes before you get out of bed. But start with something and stick to it. Remember that a practice of connecting to Source or Spirit is one of unlearning rather than learning. We are wanting to let go of thoughts and energy blocks that prevent us from experiencing our unity with God. This is not something that we 'do' but something that we 'allow'. We let it happen by letting go. Although this sounds simple it is, in fact, the greatest challenge for anyone starting a spiritual practice. We are trained and learn that we accomplish There are many reasons why you will find it difficult to let go. There are painful emotional memories and traumas that we have sought to put away by distancing ourselves from our true self. Letting go, surrendering puts us back in the realm of these painful memories and feelings. And so we will resist letting go if we have not had support for working through some of these emotional issues. We may need to find some support. It is possible to develop and deepen a practice on our own and work through the kinds of emotional issues that may arise but it is not something that many of us will find very comfortable or understandable. But know this, that the pain and discomfort that we may have avoided over the years is not the overwhelming problem it seemed at the time we decided to detach ourselves from it. We are all stronger now and we have more resources to cope with things that were overwhelming at another stage. And so do not fear what you may face as you deepen your connection with god. What you will find out at the core of your being is that you are loved, you are whole and complete, you are always connected to God and, in fact, any feeling of separation from God is merely an illusion. And any feeling that you are less than pure love itself is also an illusion. Any obstacles that you overcome will have seemed well worth the effort once you know what awaits you. | ||
| Message date: 07/14/2009 | ||
| There are many ways for us to distract ourselves from being present in this moment and from feeling our connection with our higher Source. There are reasons why we do this. The most common reason for distracting ourselves or moving away from our connection is, as I mentioned before, the fact that becoming present means becoming aware of painful feelings that may be arising in moments of stillness. You must become aware of how we distract ourselves, what our mechanisms are for breaking our connection and becoming separate and how they work. We have many stories we tell ourselves. For instance, one of the most common is that we don't have time to spend with ourselves and it is the first thing we drop when we feel pressed for time. In reality, the more time we spend with ourselves connecting to our Source, the more relaxed and efficient the rest of our life becomes. This is hard to believe but the real reason we are avoiding it is not because we have not got the time but it is not something that makes us feel good. It is interesting to look at this dynamic for one could look at it and say, "I will not spend time with me because it does not feel good." What does that mean? We can uncover many useful ideas and stories about ourselves from this dynamic. If it is not a pleasant experience to be with ourselves, what is unpleasant about it? Do we not like ourselves? Do we not feel worthy of being in our own company? Are we too emotional or do we have too much pain? What are we believing about ourselves? We don't want to hold onto these kind of stories about ourselves. They are not the truth. We must remember the truth that we are expressions of God and we are perfect in that way. Anything we believe about ourselves that is less than that is merely a story that we developed based on our experiences as we were growing up. Remember that that is all they are, just stories. There are many things we believed as children that we knew were not true when we grew up: the Easter bunny, Santa Claus. We fervently believed these but as we grew older we saw the truth. There are many more stories than we have seen. We were told perhaps that only bad people had money, sex was dirty or that all people of one race are criminals. Some of these we see the truth and let go of and others we may have never questioned. Here is the key to finding happiness in your life. The only thing that stands between you and happiness is your beliefs and the way you think. When we have been caused pain or there has been trauma in our childhood and these were not adequately able to be processed we end up with some subliminal feelings of being bad or feeling bad. That is a feeling state in us. Our minds, having forgotten what caused the original pain, uses those feeling states as a message that there is something wrong with us, that we are somehow bad because we feel bad. Whenever we find ourselves thinking that we are bad, or that there is something wrong with us we must immediately remember the truth that there is no bad and we can't be bad. We are perfect expressions of God. And so the state of feeling bad means there is unprocessed pain or trauma left over from a long time ago when it wasn't safe or appropriate or we weren't supported to process that appropriately. As adults we are now strong enough to process them but we often hold onto the fear that it is going to be too big for us. That if we allow ourselves to feel the pain it will never go away. This is merely a belief leftover from childhood, just like if you are bad, Santa Claus won't come. It is not true that if you allow yourself to feel your pain you will be stuck in it forever. The way to happiness and peace and fulfillment lies on the path through the pain. You must let go of it and release it and move to the other side of it. This is the only way. Be kind to yourself, nurture and love yourself and be sure to forgive yourself. Do not judge yourself for having been where you are or where you have been. Let go of judging yourself for anything. Allow healing to happen. | ||
| Message date: 07/15/2009 | ||
| We are now going to look at the topic of shame in-depth. In order to do this we must first come to an understanding of physical reality and our place in this physical universe. Remember that first and foremost we are created by the Universal Intelligence or divine Source or God or whatever you choose to call the loving, creative, intelligent source of everything. In fact, you are not created by it as if you were separate, but you are created of it. You are pure, creative, loving energy. This is true whether you have a body or not. The physical universe is a sort of mirror for divine energy. It is how the Source reflects itself back to experience itself. This concept may be hard to grasp as it involves timelessness and eternity and becomes quickly way beyond the grasp of the human brain. The physical world requires time and space to be experienced in a self-reflective way, but, time and space are only real in the physical dimension. They are like a dream; when you dream the worlds you are in seem completely real to you. You can touch, feel, hold and taste but as you know it is only a dream. This is true of all physical reality. And so, the mind of God within you has created your physical being as a way of experiencing itself. The you that you think of as you, which is usually not the mind of God, is part of this physical manifestation and has no existence outside of your body. The more you work to connect with Source and your innermost being the more you experience and understand the truth of this. Every human being is becoming more and more expansive, more and more aware. We are unfolding all the time. What we see in the mirror, what we experience of ourselves physically, is a reflection of how much we have allowed our expansion and our connection with God to become conscious. Our physical manifestation is only a reflection of our conscious awareness, not of our full vibrational energy. The more we become aware, the more of us that is brought into consciousness, the more the reflection changes for the positive. Our job is to continue to become more and more conscious. This means becoming more in touch with ourselves. Consider this: our conscious awareness of what is going on is equivalent of a computer that can process 4,000 bits of information per second. Our subconscious and unconscious minds are processing four million bits per second. So you can see there is a vast pool of information of which we are not aware. This can always expand and it is our job to do this. | ||
| Message date: 07/15/2009 | ||
| So the question arises, what is to be made conscious? One knows of gurus in India who, after years of study and practice, can control their heartbeats, their breathing, their digestive system. They can even manifest being in two places at the same time. But this is a mighty task. The first task for becoming conscious is to uncover those parts of ourselves that we have covered up over the process of our childhood and growing up. Imagine that you essentially came into this life as pure light and love without an ego or a self identify. The process of being born and then being dependent on others for survival slowly brings about a sense of self which we call the ego. For the great percentage of people this process of childhood and dependency is one of being removed further and further of any sense of being a pure being of light until any sense of that is completely gone from conscious memory. One begins to develop an identity based on what one is told about oneself, the kind of responses one gets to one's expression and traumatic events. This identity or ego is not based in reality, that is, not on the truth that we are whole and complete beings, but based on the idea of limitation depending on our experiences. Many of us had the experiences that told us whether directly or indirectly that we were somehow bad, dirty, unacceptable, unworthy, unforgivable or somehow and some way lacking in good character. This is the basis of shame. The message of shame is that somehow my being is not good enough. There is some sense of failure or lack or badness about me. Vibrationally what is happening is that the conscious mind, the ego, has cut off the experience of being pure light. By using a number of processes available it has "forgotten" it's true nature by lowering the vibration of what it sees in itself. Shame means to cover, to hide from view. The difference between shame and guilt is that with guilt we try to hide from the public view and with shame we try to hide from the public and ourselves. For the experience of shame is intolerable even though no one else knows about it. Shame is an epidemic in some ways. The contraction of man's view of himself is now part of most cultures and belief systems, so that even if your family didn't shame you, you probably grew up in a culture that did. The process of becoming aware and conscious requires uncovering or bringing to the light the shame which prevents us from experiencing our true selves. This means making the shame messages conscious, knowing how we tell ourselves we are less than God. This is a painful process sometimes and requires replacing shame with love for ourselves. This is difficult to do on one's own for sometimes one needs to experience another's love before they can allow their own love for themselves to be experienced. Know that every one of you is loved by someone or you would not be alive today. Find that love, acknowledge it, absorb it, allow it, get to know what it means and feels like to be loved. Understand that it is only your beliefs and shame that make you feel unlovable. You are as lovable as anyone else and in fact you are only love and loving. Remember that your goal is to remember your true self, pure love and light which lies beneath the shame. You are uncovering and bringing into the light all of you for that which you cover keeps you from fully experiencing your true, glorious self. | ||
| Message date: 07/17/2009 | ||
| In our last talk we made reference to ideas of good and bad and right and wrong. It is important to know that when we perceive things as bad or good, when we create a line between good and bad or right and wrong, we are coming from a place of judgment which is actually the result of a splitting within ourselves. The split is between our true self and our ego and comes about when we are shamed as children and told that we are bad. The ego tries to dissociate from these feelings of bad by creating a persona which it calls good. The true self, the emotional, sexual self is considered bad and so a splitting between good and bad is established. When we find ourselves judging others it is because they remind us somehow of ourselves, especially the parts of ourselves that are hidden or we are trying to cover. We may not necessarily be conscious of these parts of ourselves but our need to judge them comes directly from that dislike of ourselves. Our tendency is to attract people with these qualities into our life as we are trying to heal this split but the ego is powerful and can deny any attempt to become consciously aware of these parts of ourselves. And so we continue to attract these messages into our lives until at some point some sort of change occurs. Either we break down physically or even psychologically or we acknowledge those parts of ourselves and welcome them into our awareness. For the truth is that there is no such thing as good or bad. This is purely a creation of the human mind and has no basis in truth. Any time we choose to see something as bad, it symbolizes something about ourselves, our belief system, our deservedness, our worthiness. In some way, judging anything is a reference to ourselves. We have been taught from many sources that humans are somehow inherently bad or weak or prone to failure. Certainly many religions have promoted this view, but even some liberal political scientists have subscribed to this view. Any view of humans that is limiting in potential is inherently incorrect. All human beings are striving for growth and expansion. It may look from the outside otherwise but this is certainly the truth of all humans. It is not our position to judge whether a person is proceeding correctly on the path. Our business always lies with our own path and what we attract into our lives. If we attract disharmony, conflict, or other kinds of trouble, then we must look into ourselves for the underlying reasons. We must come to understand how we are pressing ourselves to grow and expand always. I cannot emphasize enough that there is no right or wrong or bad or good. Everyone is simply where they are on their path and continuing on it in the best way they can. Let go of judgment in every situation. It is easy to judge yourself on a daily basis and it is even easier to judge yourself for judging yourself. Be aware, become conscious of how you treat yourself, of how you see inadequacy, unworthiness or lack in your view of yourself. Take the time to correct these views knowing the truth that you are perfect expression of god, right where you should be on your path and you are continuing to grow and expand. This is the simple and absolute truth. | ||
| Message date: 07/21/2009 | ||
| In many spiritual teachings, there has been a tendency to view the body as perhaps evil or bad, a source of temptation, a lowly dwelling. The western culture has emphasized a split between the mind and the body elevating the mind to a higher stature than the body. This has been a costly belief and that is all it is. To a large degree this split has been caused by shame, as we have discussed, and has led to a very poor understanding of the spiritual nature of the body. As we discussed previously, the body is a reflection of our spiritual nature; it is a way for our divine, loving Source to experience itself. And so the way to transcendence is actually through the body and not away from it. Our path to god lies inward, and inward in this sense means bringing all of ourself to conscious awareness. All of ourself means being consciously connected to every feeling in our body, feeling the energy flowing through our whole body. Through bringing this to conscious awareness, we are able to let go of thought and experience our unity with everything. And we are able to experience the love that is what we are made of and what we are surrounded by and what flows through us all the time. Our hearts, both spiritually and physically, are the center of our being for experiencing this love. It is no accident or fairy tale that the heart is a symbol of love. When meditating or in any situation when one wants to become more mindful or aware, the more we can turn our awareness to our hearts, the light and love which is always there, the more we will experience our true selves leading to peace and joy. We have talked about how we have dissociated from our bodies and what kinds of things create the mind/body split. I want you to understand the importance of your physical body and your spiritual journey. Take the time in your day to nurture love and respect. All of you know that you are perfect as you are right now, you are loved, you are made of love, it is always in you. And value this earthly experience which you chose, and which is the basis for your continuing expansion and growth. | ||
| Message date: 07/26/2009 | ||
| I want to provide a simply meditation for connecting with God through your heart. If you don't have an established practice or if you want to try something new, this may be a useful place for you to start. You might want to read this and do a recording and play it back while you meditate. For this meditation I encourage you to sit in a chair or some other upright position so that your feet are in contact with the ground. If you choose to sit on the floor or in a cross-legged position or even to lie down but I will be talking about the feet as if they are attached to the floor. I encourage you to sit upright, if possible, with no back support. The purpose of this is to help you remain alert, hold your back as straight as possible, and align your neck and your head so that there is a straight path from your head down to your spine. Your feet should be resting comfortably on the floor. If you are sitting in lotus position or lying down, you might think of the bottom of your spine as being the attachment point with the ground. Imagine that your feet are attached, as if by a magnet, to the floor. There is a force holding them firmly to the ground. Now imagine the top of your head, the seventh chakra, as open to energy from above, both flowing in and out. This energy moves between above you and below you through your connection to the ground. You form an energetic circuit between the non-physical world and the physical world. Now, relax, starting with the top of your head, imagine you are relaxing the muscles at the top and sides of your head and scalp. Relax your eyebrows, your eyelids, your eyes, your nose, your lips, your tongue, your throat, your jaw, the back of your neck, your shoulders, your arms, hands and fingers, your back, your chest, your stomach, your waist, your lower back, your hips and pelvis, pelvic floor, your upper legs, knees, calves, ankles, feet and toes. Imagine that you can feel the energy tingling or flowing through all your body. Now concentrate on your breath. Breathe in deeply and as you breathe out relax even more and let the energy flow even more. As you breathe in, become aware of your chest and your heart. Breathe into that area and as you breathe out relax even more. If it is hard for you to get this sensation of breathing into your chest, just imagine as you breathe in, there is energy in and around your heart. This energy can be experienced in a number of ways. You may experience a light, maybe a bright white light or a gold light. You may experience a presence or the feeling of love, for that is what the light is. It is love. Imagine as you breathe in that this presence grows stronger every time you breathe in. Keep your focus right here, right on your heart as you continue to breathe in and out. In time this presence grows and spreads throughout your body. This presence is love and is the love of your creative, divine, loving Source. It has always been there and it always will be there. It is the energy from which you are made and with which you create your world. You are surrounded by this love. It is in you and around you. It is always there whether you are aware of it or not, whether you believe in it or not, whether you can feel it right now or not. It is the fundamental building block of your life and is always there, available to you. Know that this love fills you, guides you and is available for your use. It is always there and you are always loved. | ||
| Message date: 07/28/2009 | ||
| Over the history of mankind one of the burning questions has been, "Why are we here"? "What is our purpose?" Religions have come up with many answers and in more recent times New Age and New Thought movements have come up with their own answers. It is not uncommon to find some sense of work to be done while on this planet, that there are lessons to be learned, or karmic debts to pay and other various concepts that imply 'there is work to be done here'. We have touched previously on the idea that the physical universe is how Source energy experiences itself. It is the mirror, in a sense, for it to become aware of itself. There is really not much more than this to the physical dimension. There is no plan or task designed by Source. It is all a natural unfolding and doesn't really make complete sense unless viewed from the perspective of a timeless, eternal intelligence. It is nearly impossible for the human intellect to grasp this perspective. It is possible for humans to experience this perspective, which is quite different from an intellectual knowing. Experiencing Divine Intelligence means surrendering completely, letting go of all thought and compulsion and simply being. With enough practice this is available to all humans. This experience has been described as 'being here now', 'being in the present', 'going with the flow', and various other phrases. It is a fundamental aspect of any serious spiritual practice. From this place of knowing and experiencing, one can see that humans live lives obsessed with trivial details and the fulfilling of superficial desires. Lives are lived according to rules and concepts that have no relevance when viewed from this deeply connected place. And so results in much suffering and misery and frustration. For the human body and mine are built, so to speak, for pleasure and happiness. Emotional distress is meant to be a signal that you are doing something you are not meant to do, that didn't take you closer to pleasure and happiness. But this purpose has become somewhat obscured. The truth is, there is no work to be done. The human intellect has tried to control outcomes in a way that has had a limiting and destructive effect on the human soul. The intellect is a powerful tool for solving certain kinds of problems but has failed at governing men's lives. The appropriate guide for how to live is found in one's heart, one's connection to love and life. If listening to their heart, one will be moving towards pleasure and feeling good and not concerned with the impact of their happiness on others. For what many people deeply and truly fear, is the impact that their successful life will have on those around them. This is the greatest irony of human life, that there should be any reason to hold back from feeling good or happy. | ||
| Message date: 08/03/2009 | ||
| Although you create the world you live in in every moment, it is a reflection of your beliefs, thoughts and ideas. It does not mean that you can necessarily change reality, meaning the physical world you are creating in this moment. Certain beliefs have a longer and deeper history than others. Some may have been in race consciousness thousands and thousands of years, others may have only been there in recent times, but they have a vibrational strength of their own after so many years. Some beliefs were created in our minds as we were growing up or even later and so do not have such vibrational strength. This means that when we are looking at things we don't want in our world, things we would like to be different, we may have to make decisions based on them not changing as fast as we like. For instance, if we have strong money beliefs and it is hard for us to generate the cash flow we want, it would not be wise for us to spend all our money before taking care of certain responsibilities, as there is a good chance we would not manifest the money we need. If it is not in our experience to manifest the money quickly, we should not expect that to be different just because we have started to change our beliefs. And so we look for a path of lesser resistance when changing beliefs and our approach to living. Another good example is our beliefs about food, nutrition and diet. The truth is that, given the right state of mind, we can eat pretty much whatever we want and no one thing will be better than the other. but if it is hard for us to change our beliefs about that, it is not recommended to start eating foods we believe are bad for us just to prove that we can. In many cases these well-entrenched beliefs will need to be slowly changed and accepted. They will not be cleared instantly. But one who is aware and conscious will be knowing that they are acting on the basis of beliefs and knowing that their intention is to let go of these beliefs, and knowing that there is no intrinsic truth to their beliefs and so not trying to force them on others or make them see that they are right or doing something better than someone else. In other words, judgment will be removed and acceptance of people acting from their own beliefs will come when one realizes that they are acting from their own beliefs and not from some intrinsic truth. Remember that the world is an indicator of your beliefs and thoughts and nothing more. Consider that some of what you really feel is truth is actually just beliefs. It may seem outrageous to say that the idea that man can't fly is not the truth, it is just a belief, but that is the case. So many of the rules that we live our lives by are based purely on beliefs, many of them dating back thousands of years. Look at your world differently. Understand how you could change just about anything if only you believe it is possible. Do not take anything for granted. The only truth is that you are pure Source energy and that is all. | ||
| Message date: 08/14/2009 | ||
| Although you may not have remembered it until now, or been aware of it until now, you have been on a spiritual quest to reconnect to your deepest and truest self and your Divine Source. Indeed, modern life seems to conspire to guide us further and further away from that desire and there are certainly ample distractions to keep us off the path. But can you feel it and remember it now - that feeling inside you calling you home? It has always been there, that desire for the peace, the joy, the fulfillment of knowing truly you are loved and connected with your deepest and truest self. Allow yourself to feel that. Allow yourself to know that you are god; you have a home, a permanent place of peace and contentment within you. It is not a long way away. It is right inside you, right now, right here. All that is required is that you surrender your fear and feel the love, for that is your home - the love. As we talked about in the meditation, you are made from love, you are filled with love and surrounded by love. Love is the building block of our physical universe. It is the ocean we swim in, the galaxy that we are stars in, the universe that we are galaxies in. It is all a dream made from love. This is your home; it is calling you always. You have heard and felt the call before, but have not understood it. Now you know that it is right there for you at any time. Return to it. Let love be your purpose and your experience. You are loved. | ||
| Message date: 08/19/2009 | ||
| It is often difficult for people to understand the truth that the world is unfolding perfectly and there is nothing wrong. When one looks around, it is not hard to see suffering, unfairness, victimization, cruelty, and other facets of human existence that seem less than perfect. One can't help but ask how could this be perfect. But it is so important to grasp the truth of this for it will be a constant issue for most people on the spiritual path. The Upanishads state as their first truth that all human suffering is caused by not knowing the true nature of reality. They go on to list four other causes of human suffering but then state that those four are all derivatives of the first. And what is the true nature of reality? The physical world is an illusion; the only real nature is our spiritual nature. The physical world is created moment by moment as a reflection of our thoughts and creative abilities. When we look around and see suffering, it is a reflection of the suffering in us. When we see cruelty, it is a reflection of the cruelty within us. It is always this simple, that what we see is a reflection of our own inner processes. And so the way to end suffering is to become one with our true nature which is god, and to address the suffering and victimization within ourselves. Attempting to change the outside world is a fruitless endeavor and only leads to frustration, further victimization and many other less than positive outcomes. The only changes we can make that are useful are to ourselves. The world will change around us as we change and as we act from inspired motivation and not from a sense of moral obligation or right or wrong. None of us are the judge of what is best for any other person - ever. No one is the judge of what is best for us. And so, spend your time addressing your own inner conflicts when you don't like what you see in the world. Look for it's cause within you and always continue to deepen your connection with god. | ||
| Message date: 09/02/2009 | ||
| It would be useful to speak in more detail about the role of emotional work in terms of becoming spiritually awakened. Often spiritual work and emotional work are not linked together and have traditionally been separate fields of endeavor. It is important to know that there is a strong need for understanding of emotional conflicts when one is on a spiritual path. We speak of consciousness often in the spiritual world and expanding awareness or consciousness as a goal. But what does that mean in day-to-day life? In the modern western culture particularly the childhood has become more like a training ground for forgetting who you really are and learning to meet other people's needs or to do what others want you to do. The main goal of many traditional institutions appears to support a world view where there is not really room for creative individuality, but fitting in and being trained to put up with unsustainable lifestyles appears to be the main function. The way a person is convinced that their own internal desires, drives and guidance are wrong is through fear. We are taught that there is much to be afraid of in the world. We are also afraid of our parents' disapproval, which they do not fail to hold back when we act in a way that displeases them. Very rarely do we get positive affirmation for asserting our own desires and needs and so we learn to sublimate our desires, our creativity, our joy and our love. The only way to do this is to energetically shut down our awareness of those aspects of ourselves. We effectively push them into sub-consciousness or unconsciousness. By doing this we shrink our conscious awareness as more and more of our true self is pushed into the unconscious realm. We indeed forget who we are. All of that is still alive in us but it is below the level of our conscious awareness. Just the very fact of having to do this causes us to experience rage. When so little of our true selves is available to our conscious mind, it is very difficult for us to experience the deep spiritual connection. That is because we experience these deep spiritual connections through our hearts, through our deepest energetic selves, and that is the very part that we have pushed into unconsciousness. And so the work of becoming more and more conscious includes processing old emotional wounds, old fears and recurring rage and anger at what we do to ourselves every day. It is important to be aware of the fact that we are the ones repressing our true selves. Even though it is a largely unconscious process in the beginning, it is still us doing it to ourselves. The process of growing up in fear of expressing our true selves has caused us to forget how it feels to be truly connected and all that is left is the fear of people's reactions to our self-expression. So our greatest fear, in reality, is of our own beauty, light, love and creativity. Of course this is a simplistic statement, but, nevertheless, it is also true. We must keep in mind that our goal is to always deepen our connection with our deepest, truest selves, which is of course, Source Energy or God. Which means that the reason that we do emotional work is to deepen our connection. Simply doing emotional work without spiritual practice will not take us where we want to go. It will help and make us feel better to a certain degree, but our fullest and most complete expression of ourselves can only happen when we actively pursue our connection with God. | ||
| Message date: 09/04/2009 | ||
| We talked about the importance and relevance of emotional work for people on the spiritual path. At this point it would be useful to look in some detail at what is useful and what is not in terms of emotional work. Much progress has been made in understanding man's emotional nature and the function of these emotions within a physical framework. As we discussed earlier, a person's experiences in early life lead to a repression or sublimation of much emotional expression. We learn not to cry or be angry because that is not acceptable. We get strong messages from all around us about what is acceptable and not in terms of emotional expression. And so we gradually close down these processes through a systematic energetic blockage through muscular tension. If you imagine closing your fist and holding it as tightly closed for as long as you can, eventually you will become unaware of the great amount of tension it requires to hold it; your mind will block it out. It is the same with your emotional processes. The tensions required to hold them out of consciousness have been blocked out of our conscious awareness and we are not aware of them until something forces us to be. The spiritual journey invites us to revisit the beliefs, attitudes, and ideas we took on in our early years as well as examining and freeing our emotional expression. Many people do not understand how revisiting old traumas and hurts can be helpful. It is not helpful to revisit them if we have the same response to them that we had the first time. We then just re-traumatize ourselves or experience the hurt with no gain. The purpose in revisiting these places is to bring a new response to the situation. Aided by the presence of our adult and spiritual functioning, we can find new ways to respond. This allows us to heal and let go of these old injuries, thus also allowing us to let go of the chronic holding that blocked our healthy emotional expression. Another objection people have to doing this work is that it feels like they are blaming somebody or that they are being weak for not just moving on and letting go. The truth is that when these traumas and wounds occurred, there was a normal and healthy response to them which we were forced to repress. We do not go back to blame, for indeed, we are taking complete responsibility for ourselves and indeed, in reality it is us that is reinforcing the trauma and the wounds as long as we hold our normal, healthy emotional expression back. It is in this moment, right now, that we are repressing actively the emotions. The tension which blocks these energetic movements is a result of a choice made by us in this moment, even though it may be unconscious. This is not necessarily an easy concept to grasp, or accept, but it is nevertheless true. The forces which caused us to repress these parts of ourselves are no longer the threat they were, for it is our survival that was threatened we thought and believed. It seemed to us that we would be rejected, abandoned, or maybe even killed if we weren't behaving in acceptable ways but that is no longer true. As adults our emotional expression is in no way a threat to our survival. And so, doing emotional work is not about going back and blaming or re-traumatizing or remaining a victim. It is about learning how we are actively in this moment limiting our full emotional expression because of forces and events in our childhood. We take responsibility for who we are right now in this moment. We accept that we may not be conscious of all of the ways that we are limiting ourselves but commit to becoming more and more aware and expressive of who we really are. | ||
| Message date: 09/07/2009 | ||
| Here is a meditation you can use to get yourself grounded, centered and for remembering who you are. The first step is to feel your connection with the earth. It is useful if you have your feet on the ground to imagine a magnetic force attracting your feet to the ground; but you can do this while lying down or sitting cross-legged also. Just imagine that force connecting you to the ground. Spend a moment feeling that: feeling the depth of your connection to this planet, to this physical world. Being grounded also implies being connected with all the physical aspects of yourself. So now take a moment to become aware of your whole body. Start with your head; feel the energetic presence in your scalp and work down through your forehead, eyes, mouth, ears, back of your head, throat, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers. Then move down your back, the front of your body, your chest, heart, solar plexus, navel, hips, pelvis, legs, ankles and feet. Bring as much of this energy into conscious awareness as you can, for it is here you will become aware of any blockages to your energy, perhaps because of trapped or blocked emotions. By coming into conscious awareness of the sensations of your body you can become grounded. The next step is to concentrate on your breathing, taking slow, relaxed breaths and relaxing your body as much as possible on every out-breath. When you are feeling relaxed, start to remember that the largest part of you is non-physical: pure Source Energy. Imagine that your body is not anywhere near as solid as you have been led to believe, but, in fact, is alive with vibration and is only vibration. Imagine that being pure Source Energy feels like. Focus on your bodily sensations as much as you can and feel yourself becoming less dense, much more a being of vibratory qualities. As you keep your focus on these sensations and ignore thoughts that arise, keep your awareness on the sensations in your body. The sensations will grow stronger and your body will relax more and more. You will remember who you are which is a truly spiritual being made from love, vibrating with love. The sensations you feel all emanate from love. Allow yourself to relax more and more deeply into them and know the peace and calm that comes from remembering who you are. The more you can stay in this state and stay focused on what you feel, letting thoughts dissipate, the deeper and stronger your connection with this pure love will become. The more you do this meditation, the easier it will become to connect with the love. | ||
| Message date: 09/10/2009 | ||
| A question has come up about how to know who you truly are. In the course of doing emotional and spiritual work, we can come across a baffling array of concepts and terminologies that attempt to describe who we may be in any present moment. We hear talk of the "inner child", the "critical parent", the "loving adult", and it becomes a bit of a puzzle to remember who it is that we actually are. It is important to note that these concepts are merely tool and metaphors for helping us work through emotional blockages, to understand our responses, how and why we respond to certain situations, and they are not really the truth of our identity. For the truth is that we are spiritual beings, as we have discussed before, and our human existence is merely an expression of our spiritual selves. As we grow up our identity becomes smaller and smaller as we define it and limit it to the thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs that we are taught and that we decide upon, due to the forced repression of our natural self. And so when somebody asks us who we are, we can come up with a list of descriptors that are really just concepts and have nothing to do with who we really are. There is nowhere where you can find in the human body or the human spirit a part that defines you as a housewife or an athlete or an artist or anything. These are simply concepts that we think about ourselves and have no bearing on the truth of ourselves. The only thing we are and possibly can be are spiritual beings expressing as humans. The only way we can know this is to experience it. We may believe it, we may accept it intellectually, but the way to know it is to experience it. The only way we can experience it is to experience the full energetic flow of our human form without the interference of judgments and thoughts. The way we do this is by moving our awareness into the present moment, focusing on our bodily sensations, keeping our awareness there and not dwelling on thoughts and judgments, but simply letting them happen and then moving our awareness back to our bodily sensations. When we have dissociated parts of ourselves that were too painful or not acceptable, then it is our work to bring our awareness back to those parts to experience them again as part of us, which means allowing that energy to be experienced in our moment to moment awareness. Remember that the path to God is through the heart and love is what God is. The true connection with love and the heart is often the part of ourselves that was most painful and most likely to be the part that we dissociated from. So our real, authentic connection with God can't be experienced until we reintegrate that part which usually implies experiencing the pain and grief that caused us to dissociate in the first place. But eventually, the pain of not experiencing our true selves is greater than the perceived pain of connecting with our hearts. | ||
| Message date: 09/14/2009 | ||
| It is timely to talk about the idea of surrender and it's meaning. Surrender is a concept that is talked about often on the spiritual path and in the world of emotional work. It seems a straight forward process in some ways: one thinks of a letting go; relaxing; going with the flow; and other similar terms. All that is very well until a time comes when surrender is the only option and one finds that they have no idea how to do it or what it means in reality. What does it mean to sit and surrender? One thing is certain, it is not something that you can do; it is only something you can allow or 'let' happen. It is a complete absence of doing. This is a very difficult concept for many people to grasp. You cannot try to surrender. Surrender implies that you have given up the fight; you give in to what you are fighting. What most of us are fighting in our lives is a deep, internal experience of ourselves, the allowing of our deepest self-expression. This is the one thing that most of us have the biggest fear of and resistance to. It is this journey that we sealed progressively as we grew up, originally out of fear for our own survival, and to surrender takes us back on that journey through the locked doors of our heart, through the pain, the grief, the rejection and abandonment. It does not seem like an attractive journey when described like this, but the truth is that it is a wonderful and exhilarating trip at times, as we recover our deepest and truest selves and learn how to be fully human again. When we learn that we do not have to be alone, our pain is much more tolerable and we see that our compassion is more than strong enough to cope with the rejection and abandonment. For in reality, it is only us who are doing that to ourselves now. In the beginning it looks grim but the truth is that what we discover is our own love. The greatest prize of being human is the experiencing of love and that love brought to these painful places heals and lightens them. And so the benefits far outweigh the potentially awful moments and in truth there will be some. Surrender is an inevitable and necessary part of the path to spiritual and personal expansion. In the next message we will talk more about the process of surrendering, both physically and mentally. | ||
| Message date: 09/16/2009 | ||
| It's not unreasonable to think that surrendering would not be that difficult if all it is is not doing. But it could easily be one of the most difficult aspects of becoming truly spiritually focused. The act of surrender first of all requires a conscious choice or decision to let go of any resistance and blocks in allowing the flow of energy freely through your body. This implies some consciousness and awareness of the fact that you are holding on and that there is a way to let go of this holding on. We are often so unaware of our holding as this has become an unconscious pattern from childhood. One of the easiest ways to become aware of what we are holding is to practice deep breathing. Our breathing is a good indicator of where and how much we are holding. Many spiritual disciplines focus on the breathing, teaching deep breathing methods for the purpose of releasing blocks and integrating the mind and body. For now, you can try this process and see what you become aware of. Lie on your back, having your knees up or down, with most likely some degree of bend in the knees. Start concentrating on the breathing. Notice how your body moves when you breathe. Does your stomach expand or contract when you breathe in? Does it move at all? Does your chest move? Does it contract or expand? Just notice what is natural for you. Perhaps you go long periods without breathing at all. Many people are not aware that they stop breathing for periods of time. Now, once you are familiar with what is your normal breathing pattern, try this. Breathe in, thinking of the breath as going down your back towards your lower back, causing your stomach to expand. As your stomach becomes expanded, your chest begins to expand until your lungs are full. Then breathe out. Continue to take long, deep breaths in this fashion for a while. It may be difficult for you to do this and your chest may not move much or your stomach may want to move in the opposite direction, but concentrate and work at it. After a while you may begin to feel certain sensations in your body. You may feel light-headed or dizzy. You may feel a pain in your neck or face or maybe your back. What is happening is that as you breathe in higher amounts of oxygen, you charge your body with energy and as this energy hits blocks it causes pain. So now you will be becoming aware of where you may be blocking energy flow. This block will be related to an emotional issue, perhaps a fear of being hurt, or a fear of one's overwhelming emotions. To begin the art of surrendering you will need to free these blocks. This is not always easy to do by yourself but, becoming aware of them is a big step in freeing them. Just the intention of freeing them begins the journey. You can do things like yoga and stretching to focus on the blocks. Some martial arts are useful. Just spending time breathing and meditating into them can bring up memories or feelings that can be released. But if the fear is too strong you will probably need to work with somebody to help you through it. The act of letting go or releasing these blocks is similar to what it would feel like if you had been holding on tightly to something in your hand for a long period of time with a clenched fist, so long that you couldn't even feel yourself holding it anymore and you had forgotten it was there. It is difficult at that stage to let go. It takes an active conscious decision to relax your hand. This is the same with the blocks we are talking about. When you can relax these blocks, that is a big step in the act of surrender. | ||
| Message date: 09/23/2009 | ||
| There is a physical aspect to surrender which we previously touched on briefly. If we think of surrender as the becoming one with the flow of life we can imagine this flow, like a river; when we surrender to the current we don't fight against it either to go upstream or down. Instead, we just enjoy the sensation of being carried along. This flow in terms of our own physical experience is the flow of Source Energy through us. This is not an abstract concept, but something we can actually feel in our bodies. In order to feel this we must let go of the blocks to energy movement through our body, the emotional blocks that we have talked about which prevent the awareness of energy movement from one part of our bodies to the other. So often when you begin the process of learning to surrender and let go we experience fear and other emotional states that we have previously blocked off from our awareness. As we release these emotions we become aware of a different sensation in our body. It is the sensation of the flow of Source Energy. There are many aspects to this surrender. There is the surrender of ego control of the mind; there is the surrender of relaxation of the muscles and allowing whatever is inside to be experienced without judgment; there is the surrender of any limiting beliefs or ideas about who we are or what we can be; there is the surrender of any idea of separation or smallness. All this can be experienced on a physical level. How do you surrender on a physical level? Previously we mentioned the idea of a clenched fist holding onto something so tightly for so long that it had left conscious awareness. If you imagine that what prevents you from feeling the flow and surrender is bottlenecks in your energy flow caused exactly by that kind of clenching. If you could imagine what it takes to consciously let go of that clenching, to open that fist and let the energy flow, that is the physical act of surrender. It brings relaxation, easy breathing, a sense of energetic flow in the body, a sense of being more and bigger than we are used to, a sense of being connected to a higher order than we are used to, a sense of well-being and a knowledge that everything is exactly as it should be. If you experience difficulty with this process, then there are areas in your body where you are not able to relax the clenched muscular system and you need to find ways of bringing this tightness to conscious awareness. Doing processes like yoga is very helpful in this area to make you conscious of where you are holding on. Taking the time to meditate or be still with yourself will help you see what you are not comfortable with internally. If you just let what you are feeling arise, you will learn more about what you are blocking and not wanting to feel. Do not underestimate the importance of bodily self-awareness as part of the spiritual path. The Western culture has emphasized the power of the mind over the life of the body which has led to many people not being able to correctly identify their feelings and emotional states. There cannot be a true spirituality without a full and open connection with our bodies. | ||
| Message date: 10/28/2009 | ||
| It seems timely to discuss in detail the purpose of human existence. This is an issue that needs revisiting often as it is a cause for much misunderstanding and a basis for promoting many belief systems which are not necessarily truth. Religions have struggled to define a reason for human existence as well as philosophers and metaphysicians. The problem has been that these reasonings have always been based on human point of view and not seen from a wider perspective. The human point of view is fairly narrow and limited based largely upon the physical world and physical reality. But this is such a small part of the truth. Of course talking in terms of small and large when discussing something which actually eclipses time and space does not really make sense. But that is the viewpoint that the human mind is limited to, for indeed, it is almost unheard of for the human mind to grasp the reality of timelessness. But that is the perspective that is required to understand the "purpose of human existence". You will remember from past discussions that the physical world is an illusion; it is an interpretation of vibration by the five senses and it is unique to each human individual. But this is not the most important aspect of the human. The human also has the ability to be aware of himself, to say, "I am", and to have a self-reflecting experience of himself both as god and as human. As one person put it, "humans are the universe I-ing itself". The idea that the universe has done this on purpose or with a special purpose in mind is a particularly human point of view and does not reflect the truth of an unfolding universe. In fact, there is no purpose in that way to anything other than the continual flow and expansion of the universe. There is nothing that man can or cannot do to interfere with this flow and expansion. One thing man can do is change their experience to become a conscious creator of their own experience. But there is no right or wrong, good or bad about how a man chooses to use or not use this ability. Man has the capacity for joy, love, and creativity. It is hard to see why he would choose to experience anything else. Each human being is an unfolding creative force unique from every other human being. How each person finds joy, love and creativity expressed will be different. But there are certainly truths that can light the way to finding it. One of these truths is that man's purpose is being expressed simply by being born and living; there is no more to it than that. Another simple truth is that man has an enormous capacity for pleasure which is a very effective signpost to living a life that is aligned with the nature of the unfolding universe. For man has the capacity to be out of alignment with his own nature, which causes him suffering. It seems obvious from some perspectives that feeling good, feeling pleasure and joy would be an obvious indication of being aligned with one's true nature. The human mind has distorted and perverted this knowledge, this knowing, out of fear from which arose the desire to control. And now it is difficult for people to surrender to the truth of their own natures, but that is all that the problem is: a distortion of the truth. There is no such thing as good or bad, right or wrong, or evil. There is only alignment or non-alignment. One feels true or right; the other feels uncomfortable, distressing, or like suffering. It truly is that simple. So, to summarize, it is fair to say that man has no purpose as decided by an external source, an objective god. But man is inextricably a part of an expanding, loving, intelligent force. Finding conscious connection and alignment with that loving, creative force seems the most desirable way to live. | ||
| Message date: 10/31/2009 | ||
| It is not uncommon for love to be used in many different ways. Of course, there is the love between man and woman or between lovers of any description, a love for family, the love for pets, the love for food. One also hears that god is love and that universal energy is love, that we are made of love or surrounded by it. But do we really understand what love is or how it effects our lives on a day-to-day basis? Most of us at some point in our lives were lucky enough to experience the full opening of our hearts and love. Sometimes it is in a 'falling in love' setting, it may be the love of our newborn child or it may be falling in love with the world or life. But what is this love? What does it mean? Is it reserved for special moments, special couples or special families? It is true that love is the energy from which all of the physical world is created. Some people will differentiate types of love, but, in fact, there is only one love. Love is the creative, intelligent force that is expressing in a multitude of ways. The human body feels love by way of the heart, specifically through a group of cells that have the same makeup as other mind cells throughout the human body. The cells are like a translator between the human mind and the cosmic source. When we fall in love, the energetic connection between our heart and mind becomes fully open and we become connected to the creative source of the universe. When we feel love in any situation, it could be said that we are recognizing god and allowing ourselves to feel our connection with god. Falling in love returns us to an open, loving, creative state which is a natural state. It is not uncommon for this state to be dismissed as silly, foolish, temporary, or not real. But in reality it is a time when we see things most clearly as how they are. We see the perfection of the one we are in love with and most often that is extended into the world around us and we see the perfection of the world around us also. We often experience extended moments of creativity and manifestation when we are in love because our alignment with the universe is so powerful. The truth is that moving out of that state is caused by fear and by pressure from the outside world. It is not something that has a natural end. There is no reason that we cannot aim to live our lives as if we are in love all the time, for the truth is: there is only love. The universe is unfolding perfectly in every moment through the force of love. We are built for love. We have a rare ability to be conscious of love, to feel it and to know it. Most of us will recognize the feeling that everything is o.k. when we feel connected with love. We just know that the world is o.k., things are proceeding just fine, and everything is unfolding perfectly when we allow ourselves to experience love. When we are in a loving state, all of our needs are met. We have all the opportunities we could ever use to express ourselves. We have all the power we need to have the life we want. To get to this place of loving, our hearts need to be open, which really means that the connection between our hearts and our minds must be open. This often means surrendering control and trusting that the universe will take care of us. Many of us have learned that this is a dangerous proposition and that loving only leads to being hurt. These beliefs come from a time when we were powerless to take care of ourselves and were dependent on others. The withdrawal of love meant certain death; we were dependent on our parent's love to keep us alive. Due to their own difficulties with keeping their hearts open, we experienced our families rejecting or abandoning us. This caused great fear and pain, leading us to believe that it was not safe to keep our hearts open. As hard as it may seem to believe, the truth is that if our parents had not loved us, we would not be alive today. Even though they may have not been able to express that in a way that allowed us to experience that, it is nevertheless true. The truth is that it is not opening our hearts that is dangerous, it is refusing to open them that will hurt us the most. The pain and grief that we are so afraid of as we begin to open our hearts is merely the experience of the blocks that we put in place and the grief that comes up is what opens those blocks and allows the energy to flow between our heart and our mind. It takes courage to open our hearts and face this pain and grief, but there really is no other way to become the loving, open, creative people that we really are. | ||
| Message date: 11/03/2009 | ||
| In a previous message I spent some time talking about purpose and how there really is no defined purpose for human existence. For some people this will raise the question of, "How do we live?" or, "What is the point of our lives?". We talked about feeling joy, love and inspiration. For many people these are rare moments; to feel any of these is truly a blessing. There is no question that we are all capable of it and if we apply ourselves, this is what we indeed will experience. Some people talk about having the right to these experiences. This is not necessarily a useful way to think about it for it implies that someone has taken away that right and that person is a victim of circumstances. But we all have the capacity to experience joy, love and creativity right now in this moment no matter where we are. So, how do we get there if it seems far away? The art of living a rewarding and rich life is one that takes practice, discipline, and commitment for we are going to embark on a journey that most likely will involve visiting old fears, old feelings, and challenging belief systems that we have lived by and believed to be the basis of a good life. It means being willing to accept the possibility that almost everything we knew about the way the world works and who you should be, may only be a limited view created by someone else and nothing related to the truth. Sadly, this is the framework from which many people live their lives, but we are all capable of change. Once one has made a commitment to change and is open to the possibilities, the change has begun and opportunities will naturally present themselves. If you are just beginning on this path, watch for what presents itself to you and understand that the universe has a way of putting things in front of us that we are ready to use. You may not be accustomed to this way of thinking, but, if you can surrender to it you will soon find that just what you need at any given moment will be there for you. Immerse yourself in the world of spirituality and self-development. Look for people who have what you want and find out how they got there. Most of your learning will come through other people; as you grow and develop you will attract the right people to you at the right time. Ask them who they are reading or listening to, ask them what their practices are and you will soon be exposed to a wide variety of tools to help you on your way. Develop spiritual practice even if it is only a couple of minutes a day; do something to expand your consciousness. This may be as simple as reading a few lines from a book or listening to an inspirational speaker, meditating, or doing yoga, but commit yourself to some practice. The journey to becoming whole, to expressing the true authentic you, begins simply by deciding you want it. At that point everything changes in your life and your growth is assured. It is always not easy to understand what is happening at one point or another but rest assured but when you have a commitment to growth, it is always happening. Open your mind, be prepared to acknowledge that the world is different than you thought, that you are more than you thought, and the fulfilling, satisfying life will be yours. | ||
| Message date: 11/20/2009 | ||
| The concept of taking responsibility for your life is exceedingly important, although difficult to grasp. It is easy to see that we might not understand how we could be responsible for events that are seemingly out of our control. The question of how that can be possible demands a fairly complex and detailed explanation of how life in the physical world is created on a moment to moment basis. That discussion is best saved for later, but for now, it is enough to know that there has been a convergence of both traditional and ancient mystical thinking, metaphysical thinking and science. What the ancients and, in truth, all major religions, have taught for thousands of years is now being verified by modern physics research. Namely, that the mind is the central creator of the universe. You are the center of the universe. You emerge from the 'one mind' which creates all in the physical world. You are inextricably part of the one mind. Your mind accesses all the intelligence of the one mind. For people who are not awakened, (and this term is not used as a judgment, but as a description of an expanded consciousness where your human mind - normally focused on day-to-day survival issues - begins to expand and allow access to the greater consciousness; sometimes called the 'higher self', spirit, universal mind, or God), it is very difficult to see how they create their own world. They feel the victims of events that are happening out of their control. As one begins to experience more expanded states of consciousness, the more unified consciousness, one understands that one is making choices in every moment, that one's creative self is bringing the universe into existence in every moment, and that indeed, there is no such thing as accidents. No one is really a victim of anyone or anything else. This understanding, of course, is rarely achieved overnight and, indeed, for most people the complete and full understanding of this process and concept will probably not happen in this lifetime. Indeed, a full understanding is almost beyond the grasp of the human mind. Nevertheless, the more one opens up to this idea and begins to see the truth of it, the more one's life changes for the better. Very few people can remember this truth every minute of the day every day, but with practice and commitment it does begin to form the core basis of your world view. This does not mean that you will not have moments where you feel victimized or out-of-control but they will not last as long as they used to. To achieve this expanded consciousness and understanding takes diligence. It uses a part of the human mind that we are not accustomed to using, and that is easily over-ridden by the more primitive functions of consciousness, especially in our beginning days of awakening. It is easy for those areas of the mind concerned with survival in the physical world to assert their habitual fears and beliefs and completely displace the higher consciousness. This is a natural occurrence and as one deals with one's beliefs and fears it will occur less and less, but it can take a while to again remember the truth when it has been displaced. This is why it is so important to surround oneself with reminders of the truth and to institute daily practices to help remind oneself. Even these will not always be enough, for as one starts the journey to awakening, one is obligated to deal with many past fears leading to periods of despair and hopelessness. At these points one must surrender and know that god or whatever you choose to call the life spirit is all there is. There is nothing else. And that one can surrender one's will to this spirit and recover from the despair and hopelessness. It is then that one can start to create the world in a way they want in earnest, as their ability to remember the truth is greatly enhanced. And so the concept of taking responsibility for one's life really means making choices in every moment to take the higher path, that is, to take a path that remembers the truth, that enhances one's well-being and brings light and love into any situation. For in every situation we have choices. When we take control of our thoughts and know that we can choose in every moment, we have made a great step. | ||
| Message date: 12/10/2009 | ||
| It is not unusual for people who have devoted a great deal of energy to personal development and spiritual development to find that they keep slipping back into old feelings and old behaviors that do not serve them. This is distressing at times and can cause people to question or doubt whether they are on the right path. It is important for people to know what lies behind these disturbing times and to see that this is an inevitable part of growth and increasing consciousness. As disciplined as one may be in their spiritual practice, in the monitoring of their thoughts and beliefs, one can still be overtaken by fear which leads to judgment of oneself. As one achieves deeper and deeper levels of awareness and consciousness, one uncovers aspects of oneself that were considered dangerous or destructive and so had to be repressed. The feeling was that this part could cause one to be abandoned or rejected or disapproved of to such a degree that one's survival might be threatened. At this point, when becoming conscious of this part of oneself, it is natural for the ego to take over and try to control one's experience, to try to subjugate that aspect. It does this by judging it as bad and unsafe and reinforcing the fear that, if this is exposed, there will be some sort of calamity. As soon as the ego asserts itself, one is again separate from the truth, separate from knowing their own perfection and so all the old feelings of isolation, being unloved and such, rise again. This is a normal occurrence, not to be viewed as a problem with discipline or a lack of spiritual commitment. It is a natural and inevitable part of deepening your consciousness and awareness. The key to making this cycle less powerful and less distressing is to recognize what is happening, acknowledging the fear and releasing the judgment of yourself. It is easy to forget that every aspect of you, every way that you are is an expression of god. It is impossible for there to be some part of you that isn't a direct expression of god, even your battle with yourself, even your ego; they are all expressions of god. The sooner you can recognize that and let go of the judgment, the sooner you will feel connected again. This is not to be expected that you will feel perfectly connected and joyful every moment for the rest of your life. What can be expected is that you will feel accepting of yourself, whether you feel happy or not. And that you will not judge yourself for feeling less than joyful. Being human is only possible because of polarities and so polarities are an intrinsic part of being human. It is only the judgment of those polarities that makes them difficult. Remember that there is no way for you to be anything less than perfect and a complete expression of god. No matter how bad you may feel the truth does not change. You are the light and love of god and that is the only truth. | ||
| Message date: 01/29/2010 | ||
| In times when there appears to be economic problems and natural disasters it is tempting to believe that man is being punished or that there is no power behind the universe and that all events are random. It is hard to understand how a benign or friendly universe could allow the events such as in Haiti or the kind of economic deprivations that many people are experiencing. But it is at this time when it is most important to remember and experience the truth that there is one creative, loving Source behind everything that exists in the material world. There is no separation between man and god or man and other men or man and nature. You are the person whose life has been devastated in Haiti. You are also the person whose life is untouched by such troubles. You are also the divine Source of everything that we experience in this world. It is hard to believe that all of that is an illusion, that it is a product of the One Mind which means that it is a product of our mind, for our mind is inseparable from the One Mind of god or creative source. People who are experiencing pain and troubles in their lives are not separate from god or you. They are as much one with god and loved by god as anyone else. In their human existence they may have forgotten this or they may not be able to feel or experience this at this moment, but is nevertheless true. There is a bigger part of them that is pure love, pure light, untouched by the apparent disaster around them. Human compassion is a beautiful expression of the love that is the creative force of the universe. When people experience distress in the world or others mobilize to help them, all humanity takes another step forward in knowing itself as god. There is nothing bad or wrong happening at any time. There is a continuous evolution and unfolding happening in perfect ways. Those who experience the most insufferable lives will still eventually know the truth about themselves and experience the love they may not be experiencing right now. The most important task for humans is not to question how or why the universe would allow such things to happen, but to look inside themselves and find their most loving response and to find any part of themselves that would allow such a thing to happen. And to remember that there is only one mind, one divine, loving creative power that they are one with and so is everyone and everything. This is the only truth that can possibly be. | ||
| Message date: 03/12/2010 | ||
| Outlining a path to spiritual awakening: For the person just beginning their spiritual journey it can seem like there is a formidable variety of methods, practices, and philosophies in how to achieve freedom. There is a bewildering array of teachers who claim to be able to give you the answer you are looking for. The simple truth is that there is both no answer and a very simple one. The simple answer is something we have discussed in much detail and is summed up as: All suffering is caused by not remembering who you really are. As I just said there is also no answer. What is meant by that is that every person must find their way to that truth on their own individual journey. No one can hand you the steps to take to guarantee your liberation. But certainly there are facets of the journey that everyone will experience. To outline these core components of the journey we must briefly revisit some of the things we have discussed before. Our journey is really one of letting go, of unlearning and undoing. Over our years of development and growth we take on many beliefs, many ideas, we limit our self-expression, we learn to adapt and in the end we give up even knowing our deepest desires and our deepest truth in order to fit in some way. Our journey is to let go of these artificial aspects of ourselves so that we can once again know and express our true selves. So every journey includes some method for examining our beliefs about who we are and how we should live and questioning their validity. This is not a short-term process and can take place in a variety of settings, but it does take commitment and self-discipline. Some of the setting that are useful are some sort of spiritual practice and community, personal growth workshops and individual work either in the area of therapy or coaching or spiritual training. Certainly an absolute requirement is a return to the body, bringing your awareness back into your body and becoming at home once again with your emotions and feelings. This may require some bodywork, (there are many models for this), or a commitment to yoga on a deep level. A daily practice of yoga or other bodywork is highly desirable as well as a daily practice in some form of contemplation, whether that be meditation, journaling or other forms. You need to be challenged on your beliefs and your behaviors which is why having some kind of a partner, i.e. therapist, prayer partner, spiritual teacher, is a necessity. You need to seek the company of people who make you feel better, who have the qualities that you see as desirable. There are many communities of varying types that are suitable. All of the great religions have the truth at their core, although many have lost sight of that in the daily practice and institutional organization. Nevertheless, every great religion had and has great mystics and those who speak and know the truth. There are many other spiritual avenues. It is important to remember that there are many ways to the truth and in the end you will have to find your own way. Do not fall into the trap of believing that someone has the right and only way. No such thing exists. Find what suits you, that you can commit to, that uplifts you, for if it is more like work than growth it may not be the right choice for you. Be willing to accept that many of the ideas you have about living and who you are, are only ideas and beliefs and have nothing to do with the truth. Eventually you will have to give up every idea and belief and then you will operate only from your truest, most authentic self. Then you will be liberated. | ||
| Message date: 04/06/2010 | ||
| Love is a topic that has generated thousands of words in art, philosophy and religion. For as long as man has been able to record his thoughts, love has been a dominant subject. Poetry speaks of love more than anything else. The other arts draw on love more than anything else and yet nothing seems to be more misunderstood than what love is. The experience of falling in love for those fortunate enough to have had this experience is not to be forgotten. It is a time like no other in most people's lives. It is a time when the world appears perfect, when miracles happen and creativity abounds, and when joy is ever-present. What is this phenomenon? What happens when someone falls in love? Why do we seek love in so many ways? The little-understood aspect of love that explains so much is that love is the creative force of Spirit, of God, of Nature, call it what you will, it is that underlying Intelligence that animates and creates the world. That's what love is. Love is not something that happens to an individual, it is not something that happens between individuals, it is an experience of our own true nature - for in the end, love is what we are made of. It is how we are made and it is what we are made of. Love is the power that creates the universe from the infinitely small movements within ourselves to the infinitely, unimaginably large movement of the solar systems, galaxies and the stars. It is all driven by love. We associate love with the heart. There is a reason for this. The highest concentration of the types of cells that communicate directly with this creative force are in and around our heart. When we speak of opening our heart, what we are referring to is opening our conscious mind to the communication between our heart and this loving force. That is not a completely accurate description of what is happening, but it will suffice. Our heart is never really closed, it is only our conscious awareness of the love that flows through us that is blocked. When we fall in love, our ego is temporarily overpowered by the force of our connection with our heart, which puts us fully and truly in connection with the truth of our being. For that brief period we experience the truth of the world. Unfortunately our mythology and stories tell us that this is happening because of the one we are in love with. And so soon we are let down, disappointed by that person, and we begin to fear the repeat of some earlier trauma where we could no longer trust our love. We begin to close the connection once again. The reality is that we cannot be hurt again. Our survival is not at risk by opening our hearts and expressing our true selves as it once seemed when we were dependent infants. The fear is so ingrained that we struggle to open our hearts, but this is our only option if we want the peace and joy we long for. It is the risk we take as we each make our own journey back to our selves; which is the only journey worth doing and in the end it is the only journey that brings any reward worth having. | ||
| Message date: 10/12/2010 | ||
| Remember that in each moment the world starts anew and you are at the center point of unlimited possibilities. All that limits you from taking advantage of any of these possibilities is your beliefs and ideas from the past, and your belief, as unconscious as it may be, that the world can only be a certain way. Give up having to know how the world can be and allow it to be the amazing experience it was designed to be. | ||
| Message date: 10/29/2010 | ||
| Every time you take a moment to experience heartfelt gratitude for your life and what you have, it brings you closer to having everything you want. | ||
| Message date: 11/17/2010 | ||
| Living with an open heart is at the forefront of many people's seeking and teaching. It is not always clear what this actually means on a day-to-day level or in a practical sense. The heart has both a symbolic existence as well as a very important physical existence and they are not linked by accident. As has been talked about previously, love is the building block of the physical universe. When one surrenders and lets go of control one enters into the realm of love. The heart is the greatest electromagnetic force in the body. It is the major interface between the invisible and visible realms, between the source of life and the experience of physical life. The language or energy of this interface is love, unconditional, unconditioned love. That love is always present; however, it is not always perceived or experienced by the individual. In most cases this is due to childhood experiences which led to closing off the heart from perception for fear of feeling extreme pain at the perceived loss of love. So living with an open heart refers to re-establishing the connection between the mind and the heart so that one is, once again, connected to the unconditional love of spirit and the flow of life. To re-establish this connection takes spiritual practice, self understanding, and a willingness to experience old pain and trauma, but it is the only path worth taking. One must train oneself to accept and practice the idea of unconditional love, for every time one judges oneself or another, one loses the connection with their heart. The mind is quick to act and shut down that connection until the fear of loss and annihilation is let go of, which can be a slow and lengthy process. But humans have free-will and ability to direct their mind; so, even in the worst of circumstances, can remember to be open and unconditionally loving. Any practice which reminds us to keep this in the forefront is valuable. The love we are seeking is in us always in every moment and never goes away. Remind yourself of that as often as you can. | ||
| Message date: 11/26/2010 | ||
| There is much talk of gratitude and thanksgiving this time of year. It is very important to understand the true nature of gratitude and why it is so important to us in our daily lives and it is in our daily lives that we need to focus on gratitude, not just one or several times a year. It is understood in metaphysics and quantum physics that energy follows awareness. In other words, what we focus our attention on is what grows in our life. Simply by placing the focus of our awareness on something, it becomes bigger in our lives. There are many examples of this in all of our lives; it almost seems too simple to be true that if we focus on what we don't have we continue to not have it. If we focus on our pain we continue to have pain, and if we continue to focus on the good we have we have more good. But that focusing of our awareness on what is good is only part of the story. The deeper, more creative part of gratitude is the actual opening of our hearts to the wonder and awe that is the proper response to the amazing fact of our human incarnation. When we are fully in touch with the miracle that is life, we are truly at one with God or the universal creative source, and it is in those moments that we have unimaginable power to create. That is where gratitude becomes truly powerful in our lives. Experiencing the thankfulness for the miracle that our life is gives us the power to create beyond our wildest imagining. Make gratitude a priority in your life every day and every moment you possibly can. | ||
| Message date: 03/30/2011 | ||
| In this moment you can make the choice to create a future based on your past or to create a future based on the infinite number of possibilities that exist in every moment. But you must make the choice. | ||
| Message date: 03/31/2011 | ||
| Love is always calling you to a deeper connection with yourself and the world. Listen for that call within you. Pay attention. It speaks in every moment of every day. | ||
| Message date: 04/21/2011 | ||
| You may think that love is hard to find either within you or in the world. The simple truth is that if you are not experiencing love, it is because you are experiencing fear. There is never room for both. You may not be aware of the fear. You may not feel it, but it is the basis of your response to the world around you. Once you know that, accept and acknowledge it, you can return to the love which is your true nature. | ||
| Message date: 04/25/2011 | ||
| There is a part of you that knows the truth that you are much bigger and more magnificent than you allow yourself to be. This is not an egotistical magnificence, but more in the realm of wonder and awe for what created you and what lives within you now. | ||
| Message date: 05/03/2011 | ||
| Your heart always knows the truth and to listen to your heart you must open to love. When you open to love and are filled with grace there is nothing but truth. | ||
| Message date: 05/05/2011 | ||
| It doesn't matter what you think or feel. You can't change the truth of who you are or where you exist, for you live in and are created from unconditional love. This is your true nature and cannot be changed. | ||
| Message date: 05/13/2011 | ||
| Remember that any belief, feeling or thought that you are less than perfect, whole, and complete is merely your mind trying to create an identity out of your past. There is only one truth: the truth that appears through the eyes of love in which you can only appear as the perfect being that you really are. | ||
| Message date: 08/08/2011 | ||
| If only you would allow yourself to acknowledge and accept that you are unconditionally loved and supported, if you really let yourself experience the truth that you have never been abandoned, that nothing has ever been withheld from you, that there truly is no judgment or punishment, then you would be truly free. And the truth is that the only thing holding you back from this acceptance and knowing is your fear which can be transmuted by love in an instant. | ||
| Message date: 10/25/2013 | ||
| Regarding the radiation from nuclear power in Japan The dramas and crisis of the physical world are very compelling. We are attracted to them and they are attracted to us because of our own internal conflicts. We become fascinated with being scared and in danger because that is active in our unconscious. When uncomfortable or distressing events happen, we look for causes in the physical world. It is hard to accept that there is no power in the physical world. It seems very real and very convincing. It certainly appears that we are vulnerable to conditions in the world. Not many of us would stand in front of a speeding car or train and proclaim that the physical world has no effect. Not many of us would drink poison or deliberately allow a poisonous snake to bite us. Not many people would believe that a person could survive 30 minutes underwater. Our bodies are subject to our consciousness and if we believe in a kind of harm, then we are vulnerable to that kind of harm. If we remember that our body is an expression of our consciousness, then we have a whole different perspective. It is possible for a person to get cancer and to die of it. It does happen a lot. It is also possible to die without ever knowing one had cancer. Our life in the physical dimension is a journey. We move between living as first cause and living as victim to secondary cause. There is a spectrum which we move on all the time. Consider the possibility of living in an area that is highly radioactive. Is radioactivity first cause to the body? Of course not. Is it possible to be completely immune to the radioactivity? Of course it is. Is it wise to be totally dependent on being aligned with the truth in such a situation or should one be taking other measures as well? These are potent questions. The first question to ask and answer is, where do you want to put your focus? Do you want to be looking at the possibility of something wrong or do you want to be looking to deepen your experience with perfection? How much time do you want spend trying to cope with the physical world? You may recognize a fear that you will not be able to align yourself enough with the truth. Again, one must ask, what battle are you going to fight? Are you going to take on the imperfection of the physical world or are you going to take on your own refusal to trust? Your body and your ego and your humanity desperately wants to survive. It is an automatic reaction and doesn't even consider the quality of life. It just wants to be alive. One might ask oneself right now, what sort of life does one want? One where we are completely distracted by the dangers of the physical world and always trying to make ourselves safe? Or one where possibility, hope and surrender draws our focus to the invisible, to consciousness and first cause, and that is where we do our work? You will have noticed that there will have been times when you have surrendered deeply only to experience renewed efforts by the ego to reinstate control through fear and it seems as if you are going backwards. Imagine global consciousness evolving, moving to greater alignment with the truth, and the backlash of the global ego. There is no question that the global mind is turbulent. There are plenty of opportunities for drama and crisis. There is no difference between your own struggles with consciousness and struggles with the one global mind. But things can only work out perfectly. Perfection can be the only reality. You are not victims of any outside force. The future has not been determined. There is only this moment. There is only perfection, grace, beauty and love in this moment. They are the only powers. You are safe where you are. | ||