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Screaming to feel the Silence...Real trust is the absence of fear. Do you trust LIFE? March 23 You Asked For It!I love how it is possible to receive something completely new from profound wisdom - even if I’ve heard it over and over again. Recently I dusted off some old Tony Robbins CD’s and was surprised that who I am today received something incredibly different than the last time I listened. He was talking about the incredible power of questions - how they truly focus the attention of your mind. What is so amazing to me is that we continually are asking questions; in fact every situation in your life is truly a response to one or more questions. Sitting here and writing this is the answer to "How do I express what I have learned?" Our minds are continually asking questions... unfortunately they are often the same questions as well as disempowering. For example, asking the question "Why can’t I do this?" will definitely focus your attention to all of the reasons why you can’t. But if you ask "How can I do this and feel great at the same time?" will open you to a completely different caliber of answer. Or everyone’s favorite "Why does this always happen to me?" yields quite a different reality than "How can I learn from this?" The entire process is so natural that we are completely unaware that our minds are always asking and receiving what we are willing to expect. So I sat down and went through the main areas of my life and brainstormed all the questions I was asking to generate my present circumstances. A rather humbling process - and I must admit my mind often asks "What can I do to feel more secure?" (super gynormous sigh), or "Why won’t this work?" -- Always a winner when you’re looking to find a solution, focus your attention towards how to fail! Don’t worry, your mind will ALWAYS deliver the answer you’re looking for! So it makes sense to conclude that a truly effective technique to changing your thinking is to monitor the questions you are continually asking yourself. And before you can even monitor you have to be aware that you are doing it all the time. Like Faith, we already have faith, the power of our belief, yet we direct our faith towards fear or love. Well we have the power of Intelligence, and depending on what questions we ask-- we also direct it towards fear or love. "Ask and you shall receive." When Jesus said this perhaps he was pointing out the obvious more so than offering a method. However no matter how effective we become at mastering and directing our minds in the direction of what we intend to manifest, there is something beyond. Which brings me to the idea of contrast. How do you know light without the experience of dark? How do you know it’s not about getting all of the stuff until you have all of the stuff? Lately I’ve been pondering the seeming pointlessness of always striving to become more through mastering belief, when the experience of boundlessness lies beyond the level of the mind. At this moment in time it seems that unless you become spontaneously enlightened or are willing to abandon what symbolizes your security - you must master the mind in order to transcend it. Or rather surrender to it after you’ve tried to figure it out. And of course once you surrender true living begins. To me it feels like I’m unwilling to give up the fight until I’m absolutely convinced that every question I can possibly ask doesn’t lead me there. So I continue to ask...How to be "in the world" and not "of it?" The answer comes via Krishnamurti - we really only know how to relate to the words in our heads rather than to reality itself. For example how long do you experience the sky before you start labeling it as cloudy, blue, sunny, gray, etc? How long do you experience a friend before the inner conversation begins about your friend? How long do you experience a feeling before it becomes your depression, loneliness, hatred, or even happiness? When we are "in the world" we use this most incredible tool called our words to create, yet at the same time we are imprisoned by them. Awareness is always the first step, and although it seems too simple to be true, I do believe that "seeing what IS" - is really what can transform life as we know it. Watching the incessant patterns of my mind is all it takes to step out of it. Truly we must think this is too good to be true, because we so rarely just watch -- we are too busy labeling to really experience who and what we are. And when we stop labeling, judging, analyzing, perhaps we will be able to hear the answer to the question of all questions.... "Who am I really?" June 04 Vitamin T catch upOK. It's been a YEAR since the last time I posted anything here. YIKES.
The previous entry I actually wrote last fall but failed to publish until today.
So another year - five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes...what have I learned?
1. Cause and Effect - last summer and fall I read an amazing book called The Diamond Cutter - the big lesson for me from this reading was that whatever you put out is how you will PERCEIVE what comes back.
2. Listen to Pain - read my previous post - describes how allowing pain was really transformative for me.
3. Cast your NET - I went to an Intentions retreat at the first of the year, it was amazing. For a week I did nothing but think about what I wanted to create in my life this year and wrote it all down. It's amazing how easy things come to you once you get clear about what you want!
4. See it first to believe it - Visualization! Who knew? I've been picturing the things that I wanted to happen and sometimes writing down exactly how I want things to happen and it's amazing how well this works.
5. FEEL - I've been getting copious messages from the universe to focus on feelings. They never LIE. I've become aware of just how much I've denied what I feel - and it's interesting to see how this state of un-feeling-ness has become normal for so many. I'm in the process of learning to trust my feelings and really cultivate my intuition.
6. The NEVER ENDING STORY - The latest message from the universe - (and also Echkart Tolle!) knowing my story will NEVER be complete with a happy ending! This may seem depressing on the surface, but the true quest is not to use all of these metaphysical tools to finally get a happy ending, the REAL quest is to JUMP out of the story all together. The nature of our "story" is to frustrate us until we are so moved to finally wake up out of it.
So there you go, the lessons from the past year.
How blessed I've been....I look with wonder at that which is before me!!!
Namaste
TL Poetic Justice....So I recently completed a course last fall called Self-Mastery A.K.A. Self-Discipline---for the 2nd time. The first time I dropped out at the last minute because I didn't feel as if I was mastering a part of my life, quite honestly things seemed like they were falling apart and for the final project I was to get up in front of the class and start talking about how I was demonstrating mastery. Well gratefully the second time around was a completly different experience and I actually finished. So I thought I'd share my final project with you.
One of the concepts covered in class focused on emotional maturity, our ability to really become aware of the repetitve emotional patterns that keep showing up in our lives, the point being, once you can see something---only then do you have the power to change it.
So I was really aware of a relationship pattern that kept emerging over and over again, and no matter how often I analyzed it, and THOUGHT I had learned from it, it still persisted and didn't change.
So I finally got so frustrated that I was willing to do whatever it took to break the cycle. I was feeling the all too familiar unhappiness of feeling quite helpless, but at the same time knowing intellectually that I wasn't helpless, more accurately just CLUELESS. But since I kept looking for the answer it finally came.
It wasn't anything like I expected.
For an entire day I just let myself feel pain. Why? What good can that bring? Well...one of my favorite spiritual teachers Eckhart Tolle says that if you can allow pain to be, to sit with it, you release it while it's in your body before it can take over your thinking.
When we are troubled emotionally, I think our instinct is to avoid the pain as much as possible, one of the easiest ways to do this is to find the nearest distraction or escape - the underlying cause of all addictions. So when you try to avoid feeling the pain, the message it wants to deliver decides to find a diferent avenue and starts to take over your thinking. So now you start thinking negatively and start planting the mental seeds to perpetuate the cycle yet again. UGH.
Anyhoo- so I'm sitting there feeling my pain, not judging it -- just letting it be, and I asked myself "What am I saying to myself that would keep me feeling this way?" And I heard an answer, underneath I was feeling completely unnecessary on this planet. Yikes! I wasn't even aware that I was feeling this way but that was because I was so busy trying to not feel the pain from such a false, yet still powerful belief. So I'm sitting here knowing that this ISN'T true, yet totally aware that my subconscious mind is operating from that belief and therefore perpetuating this pain.
Soon after I realized the beauty of this entire experience, yet another reason to look to the power that lives within all of us. And once I did this, once I actually asked for help from the ony place that could truly give it to me, I experienced a love I've never known before and that is quite difficult to explain with words.
So anyhoo, long story short (ha ha TOO LATE) , I decided to write a poem about the entire experience and recite it with dramatic flair...
Unfortunately you won't be able to experience the flair but I think the essence still remains...
The Question
by TinaLou
Lost in a cyclical pattern of blame, shame, and regret I looked to the outside world for what I could get. Help! Help! Tell Me I’m beautiful, and perfect, and right! I kept trying to prove my own worth with all of my might Completely avoiding the message, the lesson from my soul Truly the antidote that could make me whole
For I was playing a game of hide and seek And the rules of the game were in ego’s favor For victim hood, addictions, isolation I could savor and crawl inside of never to be found Until finally…….. I heard the sound You see it only took 5 years or perhaps more accurately a few thousand tears The whisper of personal responsibility has cracked me open And now the lies that I have swept under the rug have lost their hiding place The space of love shouts “Let yourself feel the pain, why hide?” It’s only a message from inside that initially knocked gently, politely, lightly But now in the midst of my distress it raps with heavy blows For at times I want to cry, I reach for the nearest distraction, let me focus on the inadequacies of your infraction!
But no…. not this time This time I will let it be and feel the hurt, it has lied to me!!! “You’re unwanted, unneeded, unnecessary And in this world………… life is scary!”
The ancient traditions have talked of a power Once you give something a name………. It can NEVER be the same! And now I see with clarity I thought your actions caused my pain I thought your transformation would erase the stains and scars I’ve been coping with But instead I see you just reflect the fear I hold inside, the love I’ve denied, Now I am humbled, my hiding place has crumbled And I turn to what has always been
My soul starts rejoicing; this is the beginning of relief The complete destruction, the demolition of a limiting belief For all the people, situations, and events in my life Were butchered by the sharpness of such a knife
And for the first time I ask the question
“GOD What does it FEEL LIKE - to be loved by you?"
And to my soul’s delight…..
God…
never…
stops….
answering. June 01 Harmony....structure and flowThe universe has been teaching me a very powerful lesson - it's always the same lesson- and I'm grateful that the one lesson can be expressed in a myriad of ways. I've been noticing how critical it is to maintain balance in my life. The idea of balance was nothing more than a vague concept to me until recently.
Everyone says that we should keep a "healthy balance" or at my work they call it "work/life balance" - so often we are juggling tasks, people, events, work, and on and on an on, it's endless! So sure it seems absolutely appropriate that we should strive to balance all of the content in our lives.
However the powerful insight I received is not about balancing the content in my life at all! And once I realized this I was pleasantly surprised...actually relieved! I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't try to balance all the "stuff" in your life. What am I saying then?
Well what I've realized is that the ultimate balance is the balance between the inner world and the outer world. Yes the same lesson with a different spin! We all know how important it is to explore the life inside of us, or the life that is "living" us. And we know how deceptive it can be to only know the world outside of us, when we put all of our attention on all the "things" in life...after a while it seems pretty empty.
But when you marry the two, when you keep one foot in the inner world, and the other foot in the outer world...nothing ever seems the same! If you can do all the stuff and feel your beingness at the same time...a new world emerges.
There is a world of space and time, and another world where time doesn't exist. It's hard to imagine a timeless world, I guess because it's not meant to be thought of, you just feel it without words or thoughts, for thoughts just can't describe it.
A paradox is when two seemingly opposing things are actually complimentary, and yes this is the ultimate paradox, LIFE itself.
April 18 Always with youI got this today in an e-mail....so GOOD!The best experience you ever had is still part of you. The most beautiful day you have ever enjoyed still lives within your heart.All the love you've ever known is yours in this very moment. Though it arose from specific conditions, its value now goes far beyond them and continues long after those conditions have faded. What's even better is that you can take that value and expand on it, at any time, in any place. The love, the beauty, the experiences that you treasure can serve as the basis for even more richness. People, places, events and things pass in and out of your life. What you're left with is whatever you choose to keep. And what you choose to keep, what you truly value and appreciate and treasure, sets the stage for what will be. The more you choose to see the good and positive aspects of each experience, the more fulfilling life will grow. You never have to struggle to regain what you think is lost. The best is always with you, and can grow into much, much more. -- Ralph Marston March 31 Living LARGE........An interesting thought I was reminded of this morning:
Having a small identity increases the number of your enemies.
The Aramaic root of the word enemy meant "out of sync," so someone or something you are out of alignment with. I think it is more helpful to think of an enemy this way...instead of something that is against you, or threatening, or evil, but rather something that just vibrates at a different frequency!
So it is important to understand that who we "decide" we are will impact every aspect of our lives. If you look at the root of the word "decide" it comes from the Latin which means "to cut off" from any other possibility. So once you decide you are a certain way you are absolutely defining a boundary...and anything that vibrates differently can potentially become an "enemy."
So another way to think about this idea is that the larger we become increases the potential for more things to support us along the way. We'll have less things to be "out of sync" with, and more things magentized to us that support us in realizing our dreams.
How liberating to know that we are NOT the automatic repetitive thoughts and ideas our mind is continually churning out! We are something much larger, much grander, more powerful than any thoughts our mind can come up with! And when we are in the midst of all our "stuff" knowing this truth is what sets us free.
March 24 World...My finger... is on the button!Lately I've been pondering one of the functions of relationships...
I'm specifically talking about the phenomenon of how people in our lives reflect back to us parts of ourselves we are either unaware of, are unwilling to accept, or refuse to look at.
Strange but true... who you surround yourself with says a lot about who you are. Like attracts like.
And sometimes the people in our lives can cause us some discomfort...they upset us, make us sad, piss us off, and on and on and on. Basically, they push our buttons!!!
I heard this recently:
"I may have pushed your buttons, but I didn't install them!"
I do believe that everything that happens to us is only for the benefit and evolution of our own soul, the expansion of our consciousness. Well when someone pushes our buttons, what's really going on?
Let's use a simplistic example, keep in mind this can get VERY complicated!
Someone tells you that you're stupid. You get mad and think what a mean person for saying that.
You'd only get upset about that if there were a part of you that actually believed it were true. Maybe you did have a moment of stupidity and you're embarassed about it, or maybe you actually believe you are stupid. If neither of the above were true you most likely wouldn't get upset, no button inside to push. You'd probably just let it roll of your back.
So I guess when are buttons get pushed it's time again to look inside and see what's been triggered. Then you can assess for yourself if a specific belief you may have about yourself is really true or not. Maybe you did have a moment of stupidity, who hasn't? Maybe you've been telling youself that you're stupid, time to stop!
When you start to use "getting your buttons pushed" as an opportunity to cleanse your own mind of limiting ideas and beliefs you may subconciously hold about yourself you might even get to the place where you feel like thanking the person that brought it to your attention.
If everything in our outer world is truly nothing but a reflection of what is going on inside of us, then everything that happens can be used to free ourselves...
Namaste
March 13 Heaven can wait....can you?"The kingdom of heaven is within you."
We've heard this so many times but what does it really mean? For me this statement has meant that in order to become fulfilled you have to continually look within yourself. And I believe that to be very true, the more I look at my own beliefs and behaviors, or the more I become aware of the why and how of what I do, the more my life continues to improve. I no longer believe heaven is a place I'm going to, I believe it is a state of being we can all experience in the NOW once we lay down all of the limiting beliefs we've picked up unconsciously through our upbringing, social conditioning, experiences, culture, etc.
The Aramaic translation of "The kingdom of heaven is within you" has been brought to my attention lately. Aramaic was the native tongue of Jesus. The translation interpreted it as follows "The domain or power of 'I Can' is within you."
I've been looking at my beliefs a lot lately. I've discovered that all self improvement strategies only work if they actually get you to change what you believe about yourself. Change only occurs when beliefs change. Yet most of us rarely look at what we believe, nor do we conciously make efforts to change what we believe. Most of us just accept limiting ideas as truth. As I've been going through this quest of identifying what I actually believe opposed to what I "think" I should believe I realized some disturbing thoughts. In the areas of my life that I desire the most change the core belief that keeps coming up when I'm journaling is "I can't blah blah blah." Ugh.
So this statement of "The power of 'I Can' is within you" has taken on a whole new level of inspiration.
The message for me is: Even if I may still carry some unconscious beliefs that tell me I'm not capable, worthy, etc....the belief that "I CAN" still lives on beneath all that crap!!
They say that enlightenment truly is a process of letting go and at our core we are perfect. It is also said that we don't have to attain or achieve anything to become whole we just have to realize we are perfect already. Well maybe we just need to get in touch with that part of ourselves that believes "I CAN" and know that it's in there buried beneath the dissappointments and regrets.
I wonder if this was just a more effective technology to get to a state of peace and fulfillment. There are innumerable ways to change beliefs...affirmations, praying, taking a class, reading books, using rituals, etc. Perhaps Jesus cut to the lowest common denominator and meant, just find that part of you that believes you can-- if you believe you can you don't have to work on feeling worthy, skilled, etc. Coming from the place of "I Can" can knock out a slew of limiting ideas that only hold you back and deter you from your goals.
Knowing "I can" keeps you focused...I found this awesome quote the other day that I now keep on my computer monitor:
"Obstacles are those things you see when you take your eyes off the goal."
So the winning combination is to ceaselessly continue to focus your attention on that place inside that believes it CAN. I think so many of us have so many limiting beliefs that we dismiss these ideas, they sound too simple.
Unfortunately some people have to experience unbearable pain before they would even consider it.
We all have to start somewhere, so I guess for me the first step is to entertain the idea that the "I can" might possibly be inside, second step, focus my attention on it, even if only for a few seconds at a time. March 07 Dreams are invaluable.....So I picked up Tony Robbins' book "Awaken the Giant Within" this weekend and came to some new realizations about myself. I learned that our actions are dictated by our values and I started questioning what I actually value whether it be things, emotional states, etc. It was kind of a difficult exercise for me, I started out with listing the things that I thought I SHOULD value, family, friends, health, etc. But I started to ask myself how do I KNOW I actually value these things? And then I started to work this backwards, I started to look at all of the repetitive actions, behaviors, and things that keep showing up in my life and said to myself, "What values continue to perpetuate these things showing up in my life? Do these things really support the items I thought I SHOULD value, or do they support different values?
Boy was I surprised! I noticed that the most repetitive things in my life all stem from my valuing SECURITY. Yikes! Now I'm not saying that it is bad or wrong to strive for security, but I decided to look it up in the dictionary just so I could be clear about what this idea really represented. I was shocked again! The number one definition of security was "Freedom from risk or danger."
Do I really want to support myself in being RISK FREE??? I mean, most people that really accomplish great things, that think outside the box and really accomplish what most people would think impossible usually have to risk a lot if not everything. I started to wonder about how I got to this place of putting the feeling of security higher than anything else.
I learned that I adopted this value when it was necessary, there was a time in my early childhood when I was in danger and I got hurt and experienced a lot of pain. So it makes total sense that I would put this at the top of my list in order to protect myself. I also realized that the idea of security was additionally reinforced by my family, friends, culture, media, etc.
It was important for me to understant that most of us do not choose what we value, at least not at first. We are taught what to value, but we don't see how it affects our actions and ultimately our destiny. Tony says if you change your values, you change your destiny. So I'm thinking it might be time to let security fall a little further down on my list. Maybe it's time to start small, and open myself up to "little" risks at first until I'm ready for something more substantial.
Then I got to thinking, can you really lose if you risk big and fail? I realized you CAN"T LOSE! Now what am I saying here, what I'm saying is if you do "seemingly" fail you still gain something, which is at the very least an education in what NOT to do. And also the self confidence and appreciation for making an attempt. How many times do people just give up before even trying something small?
I also got to thinking how valuing security even cuts you off from allowing yourself to have big dreams. For a while I thought I didnt' have any big dreams, and I see now that I was NOT willing to let myself have them because they violated my need to feel secure!
February 09 Transmuting the Beast into Beauty.....People are always talking about keeping your faith, using your faith, building your faith, etc. So what IS faith? I've been pondering this for the past week and with the help of some of my favorite authors, I came to a new realization about this powerful force so many talk about. I wondered do many of us really understand what faith is and how to use it?
Sometimes to understand what something is (like yourself) it's easier to understand what you are NOT first!
Two of my favorite authors describe one aspect of misguided faith similarly, they just use different terminology.
For example, Eckhart Tolle talks about "disidentification from the mind," the idea that the voice that is constantly talking, thinking, analyzing, commenting, etc in your head is not really who you are it's just the accumulation of all your experiences, beliefs, and perceptions and it's constantly reacting. He says you are the silent presence that is witnessing this bundle of reactionary thoughts, your mind. You are the witness of the mind. He then goes on to say that true freedom starts with being aware that you are what is noticing all of this happening, then you no longer ARE your reactions, you just notice them. That alone is very liberating, and from that place you can actually start to gain control of this beast, your mind that's been making all of your choices.
Don Miguel Ruiz similarly describes this phenomena by describing the voice in your head as the "Storyteller." The storyteller is full of "stories" and most of these stories are lies. Lies we tell ourselves about ourself, lies we tell ourselves about others and the world. None of it's true, we don't realize the lies because we believe them to be true. Basically if you believe something, whether it is really true or not doesn't matter to your mind, as long as your mind believes something, then it is true for your mind. And as long as you think you are your mind, well, then the lies are truth for you.
So what is faith?
Well I'm currently taking a "Universal Kabbalah" class. I've been learning about the mechanics of creation and how an idea becomes manifest in the physical world. The process starts with an idea (the element of fire) and then goes down to the level of thought (the element of air) and then to the level of action (the element of water) and finally becomes manifest in the physical world (the element of earth). And what I noticed is that words exist at the level of thought. They don't exist in the level of spirit or fire or divine impulse!
So what I came to understand is that Faith, the most powerful tool we possess as human beings is concentrated belief that exists above the level of words. So for example, if we keep using an affirmation to change or create something in our lives, but our faith is invested in the lies of our storyteller, or the reactions of our mind. All of the faith we have is invested in stuff that goes against this new idea we are introducing, so nothing is going to change. So we all have faith all the time, ALL the time, it's just invested in false ideas, limiting ideas, misperceptions about who we are-- and we aren't even aware of it!
So this brings me to the idea of free will. And I see now that most people do not have free will. If you had free will you would choose to be happy, you would choose to do things that you enjoy, and not repeat destructive patterns of your past, no one would actually choose that if they had free will. So when you are identifying with your mind, believing the storyteller, you are NOT using free will, the mind is making all the choices, the storyteller is at the wheel. NOT YOU!
So how do you recover your free will and ability to direct your faith if all of it is invested in ideas and concepts you picked up unconsciously through life as a result of all your experiences? How can you use the most powerful tool in your possession when you've relinquished it without even knowing it?
Well if most of your faith is lost to your negative ego, your mind, your storyteller you have to start somewhere. And where you start is by borrowing faith. How do you borrow faith? Well what I've learned is that the best way to borrow faith is rituals.
Rituals? Yeah I know, at first this was a scary word to me, but then I realized rituals are everywhere! A ritual is really any symbolic practice that A LOT of people are doing. So think of it this way if a massive amount of people in the collective believe a practice will work - that's A LOT of faith for you to borrow from. Take Feng Shui for example, I recently had a Feng Shui consultant come to my home to help me implement some of the practices, well almost immediately I started to see results! Now how did this happen? What changed? I was borrowing the faith of so many others that believed in the art of placement for thousands of years!
I think the most powerful rituals are the ones that use strong symbols, basically items that when you see them or experience them they represent ideas to your mind. So the communication is deeper than just with words, you have an image of a jade plant representing prosperity for example. You don't have to repeat an affirmation of prosperity, your walking by the symbolic jade plant how many times a day that's delivering a message to your subconscious, to your faith!!! Think about how advertising does this to you every day!
To recover faith it's important to meditate, to pray, to find silent time with your source, whatever you choose to call it. We start by borrowing faith until we finally recover the free will we lost, then we start to direct our faith towards our true dreams, our true desires. And inevitably those true desires are to serve humanity, to serve our source, to give back to the world.
To me, faith is that powerful thought, that certainty of belief that doesn't exist at the level of words, it's so rooted in our consciousness, so strong that we don't think it, we FEEL it. How do you feel it? Well, this brings me back to the idea of "being in the moment." For faith lives no where but in the present moment. You can't go back in time or into the future to find faith, all of your certainty, all of your belief, is right NOW. So if you can just sit back and watch your faith in action, watch how faith is turning the beliefs of your mind into your present reality, then you will see that you can also use it to create your dreams, to create your true heart's desire.
the evidence of things not seen." - St Paul. Hebrews 11:1
"The way to see by faith is
"A man consists of the faith that is in him. February 01 Dance Until It Rains........Happy February!
I read a story this morning about persistence. When things aren't going as we would like them to, and perhaps we don't see the results we are looking for -- it is so important to still keep our focus and persist. What distinguishes those people who make major contributions from those who just keep waiting for something to happen is persistence.
In a nutshell, the story I read described a tribe in Africa that amazed so many anthropologists because the tribe had 100% success rate with their Rain Dance. The experts could only find one differentiating factor from this tribe and all the other tribes that performed the same ritual. This tribe kept dancing UNTIL it rained!
As the Zen proverb states, "Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water."
So what this reminds me of is that the quality of what you do, the WAY you do something is more important than the actual results. So when it seems like all your efforts are in vain, remember that the goal is not to get somewhere but to enjoy the here and now. And knowing that everything in our outer world is only a reflection of our inner world, all of these small internal successes WILL and MUST yield!
If every thought, word, and action is a statement to the universe of who you are...who will you be when things appear difficult? Will you claim the power of your faith and continue to persist despite appearances? Or will you put all of your attention on what doesn't work and allow that to steal your dreams?
My suggestion: DANCE UNTIL IT RAINS!!!
Namaste November 07 The Crux of the Bizkit......."Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." - George Bernard Shaw
Hmmmmmmm.......The search for the "self" ... is it like a cat chasing its tail?
 This idea is quite comforting and reminds me once again how our choice of words can impact our experience so profoundly. All of the great thinkers tell us that we are here to create, why do we spend so much time looking for something to distract us? I've been super guilty of this...I think somehow it seems so much "safer" to look "out there" instead of inside. One of my greatest fears has been "What if I don't find anything?"
I hallucinate that most people are unaware that their daily experience is a direct result of their habitual thinking - if everyone were super conscious of this....would we consciously create our moment to moment experience and then be able to truly realize that heaven exists all around us..right NOW?
I heard somewhere that we have like 64,000 thoughts a day, maybe more...the problem is everyday most of these thoughts are the same as they were the day before. Perhaps a combination of meditating (working towards a place of no thought) and also exposing ourselves to new material and different experiences we can shift our experience and learn how it really feels to be a Creator. November 01 Time, Time, Time....See what's become of me....."To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation." Ehkart Tolle, The Power of Now How do we live outside time when our lives appear so immersed in it? Collectively so many of us just agreed to turn back time by an hour....So this has me wondering....what IS time exactly???
Time to me doesn't feel like a "continuum, interval, number, or a system" rather I experience time as a "feeling." There are moments that seem like an eternity and then days that fly by in minutes... yet the only constant is the present moment, it is always NOW. As Ekhart Tolle so observedly points out, you can only remember the past in the NOW, and you can only anticipate future events in the NOW. The past and the future can only exist as mental concepts in our present moment awareness - if our attention isn't on either of them, do they even exist??? I wonder what would life be like if our vocabulary were stripped of the words: time, past, future, tomorrow, yesterday - and we only had words for the present. I think most people recognize the negative aspects of worrying about past and future - What is worry? Worrying is just words in your head, it's not something that actually exists in the material world. The positive expectation of what "could be" also seems to seduce our thinking and entrench us further into the concept of time. Hope for example, hope that things will change, hope that things will get better... is hoping really that good for us, doesn't the act of "hoping" send a message to the universe that present conditions are not enough and only by acquiring a different circumstance, situation, possession, person will we be able to accept the moment in which we live as if we chose it? To live in the moment, is there any greater aspiration?
October 17 Melting in a world of ice...I recently went ice skating. I haven’t been since I was in 8th grade so it took me a little while to get use to the feel of the ice again. I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult for me since I rollerblade pretty regularly.
As I was gliding along it came to me that ice skating (like numerous activities) could be a metaphor for life.
I started out pretty slow, even though on the inside I wanted to zip around the rink as fast as I could I knew that until I felt comfortable I should take it easy.
I then of course opened myself to take direction from a more experienced skater, someone who’d “been around the rink.” My skate mentor showed me how to do cross overs, how to slow down and stop, and eventually how to skate backwards.
Once I knew how, I was ready to put my knowledge into action. So then I went through a period of practice. Practicing what I learned and remembering to just have fun even if I my skills weren’t perfect yet.
As I continued circling the rink it became more and more clear how the best thing I could do was to focus my attention on my own practice. If I let my attention drift and focused on what others were doing I’d probably slip and fall and possibly hurt myself.
As I felt my abilities grow another awareness became clear, I saw how important it is to be focused on your own practice, but also to be very alert to what those in your environment were doing. If you didn’t watch out someone could all of a sudden lose control and take you down with them!
This almost happened to me, I was zipping along the ice and a little girl crashed and burned right in front of me. Luckily (Labor Under Correct Knowledge) I was resilient enough to lift my leg and avoided a painful collision. October 05 Letting go to make room for the Light....So I have returned from a weekend of transformation....
Two 18+ hour days spent meditating and experiencing the energy of an enlightened Being.
Swamiji spoke about the 7 bodies we live in - the Physical, Pranic, Mental, Etheric, Causal, Cosmic, and Nirvanic.
Some highlights -
In the Pranic layer we store our desires, we spent some contemplative time thinking of all our desires, experiencing them inwardly, and then writing them down. Then we did a very specific meditation technique for releasing these desires from our Pranic body.
In the Mental layer we store our guilt. We learned how guilt is only created by looking at past events through an updated intelligence. If you knew then what you now know you wouldn't have done it! So then we spent more contemplative time thinking, experiencing, and writing every moment of guilt in our lives.
In the Etheric layer we store our pain. Again more contemplative time thinking, experiencing, and writing all levels of pain, physical, emotional, and mental. Then we did another very specific mediation on all 7 chakras.
In the Causal layer lies the seeds that are implanted into the subconscious mind, perhaps not always manifesting but everpresent still. We performed a meditation where you try to fall asleep consciously.
In the Cosmic layer we store our joy. The difficulty is in how we seem to only associate joy with certain people, circumstances, situations, events, etc. So we then thought, experienced, and then wrote down all the joy we experienced in our lives. This was also followed by a meditation where we had to laugh for 42 minutes!! The purpose was to learn how to disassociate joy from circumstance.
The weekend culminated in a ritual where we took our entire mental setup now written down (our desire, pain, guilt, and joy) and felt gratitude for everyone and everything that helped us to create this mental setup. Then we released the past symbolically by ripping up and burning it.
Swamiji spoke of how our life is purposeless - once you allow this idea to sink into you, you finally start to live!
Swamiji then gave every person an energetic darshan - where he allowed each one of us to experience that place of no mind to the extent we were ready and gave us our new spiritual names.
My name is Ma Ananda Mandaakini - meaning Blissfully Steadily Flowing...
I have to admit I don't think I'll ever be quite the same - and that is a relief!
Although the energy change feels subtle it has changed my experience of life in the present tremendously.
Live Blissfully!
Namaste September 29 To live the purposeless life --- Drop the goal and enjoy the path! A scientist is a man who creates a formula to reproduce something that he has discovered in the outer world for others also to experience.
A Master is a man who creates a formula to reproduce something that He experienced in the inner world for others to experience inside them.
So I'm on my way to meet a Master.....
September 27 Following in the Master's footsteps..... I just got home from my first encounter with Swamiji
At the start people were just going up to him and introducing themselves, welcoming him...
I found myself just wanting to sit there and observe and not participate, meaning I was perhaps intimidated or nervous to approach him. But after some much needed coaxing I went up there and said hello. He said to me "You are from Seattle." And I said yes and then went back to my seat.
He then answered question after question...
Here's some of the highlights I remember....
He talked about being present in your body - for example if you are thinking about what you are going to be doing when you get home, you are not where your body is, perhaps your body is in the car in traffic, are you where your body is, or is your attention on the things you left behind at work, or what you think you have to do when you get somewhere. I can see for myself this may be a bit of a challenge.
So my first experience was very positive and I am absolutely looking forward to spending more time with Swamiji this weekend in Vancouver. Trading in "the quest" for a life....“If you look deep inside, you will realize that most of us are not afraid of dying. We are afraid that we haven’t lived our lives.” – Paramahamsa Nithyananda |
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time n. 
DejaGroove at Petosas Everett this weekend!
Think LESS....Be MORE
"I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me." - Herman Hesse, prologue to Demian
So when I am in the middle of all my "stuff" and using my somewhat overly analytical brain to figure out how to get it all done or solve some "seemingly urgent" issue, I want to remember this quote! I don't know about you, but I can get pretty tied up in analysis and my intellect, comparisons, etc. I think it is good to do this work, to use what you know- or attempt to find additional resources to make choices no matter how small or large. But I think there is also something within us that knows without all of the busyness of thinking, I intend to rely on that more than my intellect, more than what my mind can figure out.
I think this is what addictions have robbed from us. Whether it is food, power, money, alcohol, drugs, sex, TV, video games, work, control, and on and on and on...Focusing on an addiction gets us out of our bodies - we become so tied up in a distraction we miss out on the freedom that is already within us. Then we begin to rationalize it in our minds, this is good that is bad, do this do that.
Always returning to the silence, get quiet and listen to that which needs no words to express. I've heard this so many times - I suppose until I have completely mastered the art of relying on intuition it's good to be reminded.
So busy doing....am I listening?
FEAR, F-alse E-vidence A-ppearing R-eal...
"Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them." - Epictetus
The ideas and attitudes we hold about something in our minds have so much power it is good to be reminded that fear is generated from our thoughts about something rather than the thing itself.
If X happens what thoughts emerge that try to convince you that some form of pain is on its way?
And now that we are aware of this phenomenon how do you begin to shift it? Is there something within us that is stronger than any thought that happens to float through our awareness?
I suppose this is where attitude becomes so important, I know that I often forget how our daily outlook on life has such an impact on our thoughts - it is so automatic. I'm in a happy mood and then I choose to view any event as something brought as a gift for my own personal expansion. I'm feeling blue and everything seems like its there to remind me of my imperfection. So I suppose one way to eliminate the fears that are useless and distracting is to just be aware of your attitude.
Ultimate Paradox - Passion vs Security
Here is my new favorite quote
"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." - Vaclav Havel
I stumbled across this today in my new book "Callings" by Gregg Levoy, I got to meet Gregg this morning after he spoke about the infinite variety and consistency the universe uses to deliver us messages in which to call us into action. I was witnessing myself as he was signing my book and questioning why I had such little to say to a soul that so obviously spoke to something within me. A frequent occurence and now I wonder if it is a calling, a message from the universe to my being, to be able to express myself in the presence of someone or something I uphold.
What grabbed me during his speech was when he brought up the concept of passion vs security, a seeming recurrent theme in my life. I think I delude myself at times into thinking I have no passion, or worse yet- convince myself that the pursuit of security is my passion, ha!
But the amazing thing about a paradox, two "seemingly" opposing forces or ideas that are actually complimentary...Ah, there's the rub. Somehow this quest for passion and this need for security are working together to help us accept the drama that pervades our everyday existence and somehow experience peace in the presence of it all.
I just finished watching a film, "I Heart Huckabees" I had made several attempts over the past few weeks to watch it in its entirety and never quite made it until this evening. What I took away from it was the idea that the answer to human suffering is to accept that human suffering exists in the first place. Which is a very similar concept to the idea of how the angel of death brings life. Toltec wisdom tells us to imagine our death daily as a spiritual practice. Think about it, if in every moment you lived it as your last, then you would truly be experiencing life to its fullest. Fear would no longer prevent you from saying the things you wouldn't say, you would do the things you would do if the veil of social conditioning paled in comparison to the all too brief time span you'd have left to express the uniqueness within.
So I shall believe the universe called me to express what was inside this evening...
Back to Havel's quote, it is rather comforting. For a while I didn't like the word "hope" because it implied a sense of insecurity for me, if you are hoping you are not convinced someting could be true. But the distinction Havel makes is hope is not wishing for something, but rather knowing something despite the outward appearance or external results. Perhaps that is just another way of describing faith, a belief that is rooted without evidence, without a story from our past to back it up, without something outside of us that assists us in thinking something is true...
Faith is perhaps the only true "something" that comes from nothing.........
Namaste
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Lisa Ericksonwrote:
Hi Tina #1
hope you're doing well! love your space!! best, Lisa
Apr. 4
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TinaLou
Occupation Location Interests "Self importance is our greatest enemy. What weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellows. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone." - Carlos Castanada
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