When I entered the world of blogging it felt a bit odd, like talking to myself in a way, or recording my personal reflections as sort of an online diary. Sometimes I had inspirations that I wanted to write about, which I did, but I find inspirations come more fluidly when ideas are sparked in relationship to others.
A wonderful new friend invited me to participate in a site that was being "re-developed" to expand global consciousness and to create community. The site is called Avanoo, www.avanoo.com. The space is dynamic, kind, loving and co-creative and it has become a wonderful part of my life. I do the majority of my posting there now because it comes naturally as a part of dialogue.
I invite those who are interested in the type of offerings I make to come to Avanoo where you will find a banquet rather than one offering on the menu. Avanoo is a place for inspired engagement for dreaming a new world and for occupying home,in each aspect of its development, with gratitude, ease, awareness and joy.
My profile picture and name is the same as here. You can select "Listen" once you are in my profile and you will get notifications of new postings from me, or other people you choose to "listen to" when you log into the site (click on notifications). Otherwise you can just browse the recent activity.
Hope to see you there!
Lots of love,
Dawn
Friday, March 5, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Giving Up Judgment for Lent
I had a client in my office the other day and she was talking about the "bad things" she was giving up for Lent. I can certainly understand if it feels important to change a behavior because it doesn't support the person, and I've heard that it takes 30 days (or maybe it's 6 weeks) to establish a new habit. That's all good, but in her case, as I think is true for many, it was about sacrificing the pleasures she felt guilty about.
I invited her to instead consider giving up judgment for 40 days, since I think that was more what Christ had in mind anyway. Hey, what if that resulted in a newly formed habit at the end of Lent? Wouldn't that make the offering up of Christ's life more worth it than the fact that someone wasn't eating Twinkies anymore?
I don't know, just food for thought :)
I invited her to instead consider giving up judgment for 40 days, since I think that was more what Christ had in mind anyway. Hey, what if that resulted in a newly formed habit at the end of Lent? Wouldn't that make the offering up of Christ's life more worth it than the fact that someone wasn't eating Twinkies anymore?
I don't know, just food for thought :)
Friday, February 5, 2010
Love is the Doorway
Many years ago I had an instantaneous healing experience that followed weeks of praying for an ailment to be healed with no result. At the point of the healing, something was communicated to me from spirit that enabled me to see that the prayers had been offered in more of a rote fashion than with a sense of faith in the outcome. Praying was simply what one was supposed to do in such cases, but I had no real sense of them being received and the request granted. The day the healing occurred I received the message that if I truly believed I could be healed, I would be. The moment that really clicked in me the pain and other symptoms were gone.
I think that in a similar way I have created my own barrier to awakening because of some basic misperceptions. I have held the notion that to awaken fully and completely meant giving up everything of this world and I made a pact with God to do just that when I was in my mid-twenties. I think on some level I assumed that included loving partnerships, because I equated that with attachment. I think the deeper truth is that this was a convenient way to avoid vulnerability and potential pain.
It’s amazing to me sometimes how the most profound understandings are really so darn simple, and get lost in all of the other conditioned beliefs. What I think I am finally grocking is that waking up depends on loving fully. Just as with the instantaneous healing I think I had the core understanding about awakening backwards. I assumed that I had to be fully awake to be an embodiment of love. I’m sure the conditions of each awakening are different, but my sense is that creating a practice of being present to love each moment is more important than a letting go of the world. I’m not talking romantic love either, I’m referring to the hardest kind of love—to love everything as it is. Any parent also knows that what is offered from love may often not feel like it.
Some of the most profound experiences I’ve had as an “activist” involved seeing beyond surface appearances into the essence of someone perceived as the enemy and loving them. The reactions against that both from fellow do-gooders, and from my own internal judge, are that if I love someone in this way they may forget that I don’t agree with them. They may think I have forgiven them and that we are no longer opponents. It may be taken as they no longer need to feel the guilt and pain over their actions that I’m intent on eliciting or reinforcing in them. I think the bigger question here is, What does happen when we truly forget that we are enemies or that we have different ways of being in the world? Please don’t take this to mean that behaviors that are not supportive of the whole go unaddressed, but rather that true transformation results more from love than judgment and rejection. (I will include fear in this also, because I strongly believe that lasting change is not brought about by fear).
On the level of personal relationship there is a lot of hesitation to use the word love, particularly between adults because there is a fear that the depth of that will be misconstrued. We also withhold our love until we have deemed someone worthy. Personally, I sign the bulk of my communications—Lots of Love and I mean it. I refrain from this only when I feel someone doesn’t know me well enough to understand that it is simply a statement of where I am coming from. It does not, however, define a type of relationship, or any expectations I have with that person. If there is any confusion or concern around what I mean, just ask me to clarify.
Lots of love,
Dawn
I think that in a similar way I have created my own barrier to awakening because of some basic misperceptions. I have held the notion that to awaken fully and completely meant giving up everything of this world and I made a pact with God to do just that when I was in my mid-twenties. I think on some level I assumed that included loving partnerships, because I equated that with attachment. I think the deeper truth is that this was a convenient way to avoid vulnerability and potential pain.
It’s amazing to me sometimes how the most profound understandings are really so darn simple, and get lost in all of the other conditioned beliefs. What I think I am finally grocking is that waking up depends on loving fully. Just as with the instantaneous healing I think I had the core understanding about awakening backwards. I assumed that I had to be fully awake to be an embodiment of love. I’m sure the conditions of each awakening are different, but my sense is that creating a practice of being present to love each moment is more important than a letting go of the world. I’m not talking romantic love either, I’m referring to the hardest kind of love—to love everything as it is. Any parent also knows that what is offered from love may often not feel like it.
Some of the most profound experiences I’ve had as an “activist” involved seeing beyond surface appearances into the essence of someone perceived as the enemy and loving them. The reactions against that both from fellow do-gooders, and from my own internal judge, are that if I love someone in this way they may forget that I don’t agree with them. They may think I have forgiven them and that we are no longer opponents. It may be taken as they no longer need to feel the guilt and pain over their actions that I’m intent on eliciting or reinforcing in them. I think the bigger question here is, What does happen when we truly forget that we are enemies or that we have different ways of being in the world? Please don’t take this to mean that behaviors that are not supportive of the whole go unaddressed, but rather that true transformation results more from love than judgment and rejection. (I will include fear in this also, because I strongly believe that lasting change is not brought about by fear).
On the level of personal relationship there is a lot of hesitation to use the word love, particularly between adults because there is a fear that the depth of that will be misconstrued. We also withhold our love until we have deemed someone worthy. Personally, I sign the bulk of my communications—Lots of Love and I mean it. I refrain from this only when I feel someone doesn’t know me well enough to understand that it is simply a statement of where I am coming from. It does not, however, define a type of relationship, or any expectations I have with that person. If there is any confusion or concern around what I mean, just ask me to clarify.
Lots of love,
Dawn
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Healing Communities
It feels like a time of moving from a consumptive economy to an enrichment economy. That said, I am inspired to breathe life back into a long-held vision to develop a highly creative and self-sufficient community as a model and resource center for others who want to explore harmonious ways of living. My idea of this is community made up of simple individual living spaces, although if people are inspired to live in more of a collective, that's up to them. The community I have envisioned will have five primary focuses: 1) care for and education of the children; 2) food production; 3) architectural design for energy and resource efficiency with an emphasis on aesthetic beauty; 4) healing and transformational services (which includes a strong emphasis on the creative arts), and 5) consulting, communications and external project funding. The objective is to provide livelihoods for community members through these five focus areas.
I see people from all walks of life visiting this community not only to explore the idea of cooperative living, but to take part in a series of experiences which would open them up to their creative potential by reconnecting them to a part of themselves that longs to dream and to celebrate. By the way this model can easily be integrated into existing communities.
Intuitive knowing and a sense of balance within our environment has been conditioned out of many of us, or at least significantly repressed. How many of us are even the least bit aware of what our own bodies are trying to communicate to us through discomfort or illness? We have been taught not to pay attention—take a pill and it will go away, rather than exploring where our body is telling us we are out of balance. Similarly we are taught not to pay too much attention to the environmental imbalances that speak to us of a system in distress. If the water is not healthy to drink, we are sold water filters rather than being asked to look at how we are contributing to the situation.
The objective of the experiences people would go through in this community is to get them back into their bodies, so to speak, to enliven their senses and empower them to be acutely aware of how they are interacting with everything going on inside of and around them.
There could be retreat-type programs that included some or all of the following: 1) dream work and journaling; 2) body movement including five-rhythms, ecstatic or freeform dance, Tai Chi, yoga, etc.; 3) music workshops, i.e., drumming, singing, toning, etc., 4) communication workshops, i.e., consensus or team building, effective/compassionate dialoging and active listening, mediation; and 5) solo or guided wilderness quests. Body work or healing modalities geared toward accelerated release of emotional and physical blocks would also be available upon request, but would not be required.
During the course of a day, visitors would have free time to spend with members of the community whose function they were particularly interested in. For example, if someone’s profession was as an educator they might be interested in observing how that function happened in the community.
At the end of a day, people might gather around a fire to the sound of drumming to hear the storyteller weave a tale of who we are and where we have come from. Then the group would begin to develop their own story of where they want to go. By creating one’s own dream, the chances of maintaining the commitment to follow through are greatly increased.
The emphasis of the community experience would be to empower people to start from wherever they are to create a more satisfying life. Although the community itself would serve as one model, it is only that. This would not be presented as the only way to live, since it will simply not be within the reach of some of the people who come as participants. Ideally, funds will be raised to enable people from a range of social situations to come and participate and to have access to the help they need to actualize their dreams. For example, inner-city youth who are interested in taking their energy for organizing gangs and directing it another way can apply for scholarships. Once they have developed a plan or vision for how they want to enhance the communities from which they have come, staff members would be available as consultants to assist with the development of plans or to guide them to the resources they will need. It is even possible that some type of foundation could be set up as a part of the community that would provide funds for start-up projects on a limited basis.
The Community Core Center Design
Urban or suburban communities can also be enlivened and transformed with the introduction of a community core center. The model community proposed above would serve as a resource center to provide consulting services to guide people through the process of designing centers in their existing neighborhoods for the purpose of reestablishing and deepening their joyful engagement with one another. These centers would incorporate nodes that catered to the needs and interests of the members of that particular community. Existing buildings can be adapted for this purpose. In new developments, or where vacant lots exist, earth-friendly, energy-smart centers can be built. Following are some of the components that might make sense:
* A type of “general store” that would be a food co-op, carrying locally grown organic foods and also hand-crafted goods. An important aspect would also be to have a type of café or gathering space for socializing. Having live music or open-mike events further attracts people to hang out and interact, as well as creating venues for artistic expression.
* Shared gardens, both a community food garden and beautiful reflective gardens to engage the senses and for peaceful contemplation and renewal.
* A business resource center, particularly for people who have home-based businesses who would benefit from convenient access to shared equipment or services such as shipping. These can be relatively small and still serve the needs of the immediate community. It can also be a place for people to have a workspace who are visiting for a while.
* A community room for gathering to play music or have performances, meetings, classes such as yoga, dance, or celebrations of various kinds.
* In artisan communities there may be a desire for a ceramics studio or another type of workshop that people wouldn’t necessarily have room to incorporate in their home space, and would enjoy sharing with others.
* There might also be a desire for a few spa type rooms with hot tubs and space for services like massage or body work, or other healing modalities.
* There could be spaces for after school programs with the elders of the community being available for tutoring, storytelling, or childcare.
Basically, members designing the center would want to think in terms of what would draw them into the community space with others, feel nurturing, and make their life easier and more joyous.
When I think about these spaces I know that beauty draws me in, not just functionality. I suppose this would be the Feng Shui aspect of the design, or what encourages energy to flow there. Buckminster Fuller captured it when he said: “When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
The garden aspect of the core center seems key. Personally, I like the idea of rooms or spaces that are built out around a beautiful hub—a garden that people can even walk into and sit next to a pond or small waterfall. Hot tub rooms could be situated to look onto the garden in areas that would have privacy. The café or other socializing spaces would also be enhanced by the garden. Additionally, there could be two garden spaces, one a community garden for growing food, the other aesthetic.
These centers would be supported financially both by membership fees from the community members, similar to homeowner’s association dues, and revenues generated by different aspects like the business center, café, or healing services. There may even be Bed and Breakfast pods adjoining the center for visitors coming for workshops held at the center, or just people who are interested in visiting to experience what it is like to live in one of these vibrant hubs. Additionally, initiatives could be put forward with local governments to give financial incentives for these centers since they would increase the health and well-being of their citizenry. This isn’t out of the question, since this is a common practice with large-scale development.
I also see this being a car-free center with ample bike and walking paths leading into the center, with covered, artistically enhanced walkways in between the different pods of the hub. One of the community services could be little electric shuttle carts for people who couldn’t walk or bike into the center from an outlying area.
To further enhance the healing aspect of this core center, it could be designed in line with sacred geometry principles and include things like labyrinths. There is so much creativity that could be brought to this endeavor and ultimately it is about communities thriving because money is kept local and relationships with each other and the Earth are the focal point.
Please respond if you want to join me in taking this idea further! (Or, if you already have such a thing going!)
I see people from all walks of life visiting this community not only to explore the idea of cooperative living, but to take part in a series of experiences which would open them up to their creative potential by reconnecting them to a part of themselves that longs to dream and to celebrate. By the way this model can easily be integrated into existing communities.
Intuitive knowing and a sense of balance within our environment has been conditioned out of many of us, or at least significantly repressed. How many of us are even the least bit aware of what our own bodies are trying to communicate to us through discomfort or illness? We have been taught not to pay attention—take a pill and it will go away, rather than exploring where our body is telling us we are out of balance. Similarly we are taught not to pay too much attention to the environmental imbalances that speak to us of a system in distress. If the water is not healthy to drink, we are sold water filters rather than being asked to look at how we are contributing to the situation.
The objective of the experiences people would go through in this community is to get them back into their bodies, so to speak, to enliven their senses and empower them to be acutely aware of how they are interacting with everything going on inside of and around them.
There could be retreat-type programs that included some or all of the following: 1) dream work and journaling; 2) body movement including five-rhythms, ecstatic or freeform dance, Tai Chi, yoga, etc.; 3) music workshops, i.e., drumming, singing, toning, etc., 4) communication workshops, i.e., consensus or team building, effective/compassionate dialoging and active listening, mediation; and 5) solo or guided wilderness quests. Body work or healing modalities geared toward accelerated release of emotional and physical blocks would also be available upon request, but would not be required.
During the course of a day, visitors would have free time to spend with members of the community whose function they were particularly interested in. For example, if someone’s profession was as an educator they might be interested in observing how that function happened in the community.
At the end of a day, people might gather around a fire to the sound of drumming to hear the storyteller weave a tale of who we are and where we have come from. Then the group would begin to develop their own story of where they want to go. By creating one’s own dream, the chances of maintaining the commitment to follow through are greatly increased.
The emphasis of the community experience would be to empower people to start from wherever they are to create a more satisfying life. Although the community itself would serve as one model, it is only that. This would not be presented as the only way to live, since it will simply not be within the reach of some of the people who come as participants. Ideally, funds will be raised to enable people from a range of social situations to come and participate and to have access to the help they need to actualize their dreams. For example, inner-city youth who are interested in taking their energy for organizing gangs and directing it another way can apply for scholarships. Once they have developed a plan or vision for how they want to enhance the communities from which they have come, staff members would be available as consultants to assist with the development of plans or to guide them to the resources they will need. It is even possible that some type of foundation could be set up as a part of the community that would provide funds for start-up projects on a limited basis.
The Community Core Center Design
Urban or suburban communities can also be enlivened and transformed with the introduction of a community core center. The model community proposed above would serve as a resource center to provide consulting services to guide people through the process of designing centers in their existing neighborhoods for the purpose of reestablishing and deepening their joyful engagement with one another. These centers would incorporate nodes that catered to the needs and interests of the members of that particular community. Existing buildings can be adapted for this purpose. In new developments, or where vacant lots exist, earth-friendly, energy-smart centers can be built. Following are some of the components that might make sense:
* A type of “general store” that would be a food co-op, carrying locally grown organic foods and also hand-crafted goods. An important aspect would also be to have a type of café or gathering space for socializing. Having live music or open-mike events further attracts people to hang out and interact, as well as creating venues for artistic expression.
* Shared gardens, both a community food garden and beautiful reflective gardens to engage the senses and for peaceful contemplation and renewal.
* A business resource center, particularly for people who have home-based businesses who would benefit from convenient access to shared equipment or services such as shipping. These can be relatively small and still serve the needs of the immediate community. It can also be a place for people to have a workspace who are visiting for a while.
* A community room for gathering to play music or have performances, meetings, classes such as yoga, dance, or celebrations of various kinds.
* In artisan communities there may be a desire for a ceramics studio or another type of workshop that people wouldn’t necessarily have room to incorporate in their home space, and would enjoy sharing with others.
* There might also be a desire for a few spa type rooms with hot tubs and space for services like massage or body work, or other healing modalities.
* There could be spaces for after school programs with the elders of the community being available for tutoring, storytelling, or childcare.
Basically, members designing the center would want to think in terms of what would draw them into the community space with others, feel nurturing, and make their life easier and more joyous.
When I think about these spaces I know that beauty draws me in, not just functionality. I suppose this would be the Feng Shui aspect of the design, or what encourages energy to flow there. Buckminster Fuller captured it when he said: “When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
The garden aspect of the core center seems key. Personally, I like the idea of rooms or spaces that are built out around a beautiful hub—a garden that people can even walk into and sit next to a pond or small waterfall. Hot tub rooms could be situated to look onto the garden in areas that would have privacy. The café or other socializing spaces would also be enhanced by the garden. Additionally, there could be two garden spaces, one a community garden for growing food, the other aesthetic.
These centers would be supported financially both by membership fees from the community members, similar to homeowner’s association dues, and revenues generated by different aspects like the business center, café, or healing services. There may even be Bed and Breakfast pods adjoining the center for visitors coming for workshops held at the center, or just people who are interested in visiting to experience what it is like to live in one of these vibrant hubs. Additionally, initiatives could be put forward with local governments to give financial incentives for these centers since they would increase the health and well-being of their citizenry. This isn’t out of the question, since this is a common practice with large-scale development.
I also see this being a car-free center with ample bike and walking paths leading into the center, with covered, artistically enhanced walkways in between the different pods of the hub. One of the community services could be little electric shuttle carts for people who couldn’t walk or bike into the center from an outlying area.
To further enhance the healing aspect of this core center, it could be designed in line with sacred geometry principles and include things like labyrinths. There is so much creativity that could be brought to this endeavor and ultimately it is about communities thriving because money is kept local and relationships with each other and the Earth are the focal point.
Please respond if you want to join me in taking this idea further! (Or, if you already have such a thing going!)
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Honoring My Body
I often wake in the morning with some type of ephiphany, perhaps resulting from soul journeys into other dimensions of consciousness, undertaken to weave together bits of information that haven't connected during waking hours.
Before jumping into what now seems ridiculously obvious, and yet still unresolved, I have to give a bit of background on how I relate to my body. For as long as I can remember I have struggled with weight issues, although I have had reprieves for periods of time when I would get everything just right in my diet and exercise routine. I was never one of those people who could maintain a stable weight for years with relatively little attention to the matter. While I gave up on ever having the "idealized female form" a long time ago, paying attention to my body for health reasons is very important.
As of the first of December I moved out of the house I was in when I began this blog. I had another temporary place to go to but not until the first of the year. I knew I was going to Colorado for Christmas and so I decided to camp in my office until I left. The combination of non-routine situations got me into some non-optimal eating habits and exercise went out the window as well. On top of that was the challenge of "holiday eating" . . . need I say more? So I'm back to square one on balancing my body and dropping the resulting weight. This part of the routine I am very familiar with, and also the fact that once I have spiraled down there seems to be a magnetic force that wants to suck me deeper into that hole. Combined with the physical weight and lethargy comes an emotional heaviness. No big surprise there either. What does amaze me is how I can still be surprised by how easy it is to change the emotional heaviness just by putting my body in motion again. Energy gets stuck and if I don't actively make a point to move it, well I stagnate . . . just like the water in a pond that doesn't circulate in some way. Okay, so far none of this is earthshaking news.
So, yesterday I was giving myself a biofeedback treatment and what popped up to be addressed was to reduce self-destructive behavior. It was a bit of a shock, but only momentarily, because I had to quickly acknowledge that despite how well I thought I was handling all of the instability I was neither exercising nor making good food choices. Hey, depression doesn't just happen, it creeps up on people slowly because we don't want to cop to the little self-destructive things that are laying a solid foundation. The biofeedback wake-up was the first bit of information that played into this morning's awareness.
The second thing that happened was when I returned "home" to the house I will be in until the spring, I had an email from the lovely folks who own the house and live upstairs telling me how much they appreciated that I respected and cared for their home more than anyone else that had ever lived here. I emailed back to say that they had invested so much of their love into the house that it would feel awful not to take care of it.
The third piece is that I have been reading The Disapperance of the Universe, which is connected to The Course in Miracles. I have spent many years engaged in spiritual dialogue that reminds us we are really spirit and not to be so identified with the body, but this book really hammers home that we are not bodies and this is all an illusion. Bear with me now as I try and quickly tie this all together.
This morning I woke feeling an emotional heaviness and I recognized the connection to the sluggishness in my body. I also saw the lack of care of my body being connected with the "self-destructive" urge to be free of the small self, or ego identity, because so much of my energy has gone into focusing on my physical reality. Perhaps all along my weight struggle has been an ego-identity battle. One part of me wanting to validate my physical existence and the other wanting to break free of what tethers me to this world. The crazy thing is that neither of these parts represents spirit, for spirit is already free.
Whether being here in this body is an illusion or not, I am having this experience and I recognize the love that is in every cell of this body that keeps it working in such a miraculous way in spite of me. I'm so sorry that for one moment, on any level of my being, I wished to be free of this, and when I return to the ultimate home I have a sense that whoever is upstairs will be grateful for how well I took care of my physical homes--both body and Earth.
Before jumping into what now seems ridiculously obvious, and yet still unresolved, I have to give a bit of background on how I relate to my body. For as long as I can remember I have struggled with weight issues, although I have had reprieves for periods of time when I would get everything just right in my diet and exercise routine. I was never one of those people who could maintain a stable weight for years with relatively little attention to the matter. While I gave up on ever having the "idealized female form" a long time ago, paying attention to my body for health reasons is very important.
As of the first of December I moved out of the house I was in when I began this blog. I had another temporary place to go to but not until the first of the year. I knew I was going to Colorado for Christmas and so I decided to camp in my office until I left. The combination of non-routine situations got me into some non-optimal eating habits and exercise went out the window as well. On top of that was the challenge of "holiday eating" . . . need I say more? So I'm back to square one on balancing my body and dropping the resulting weight. This part of the routine I am very familiar with, and also the fact that once I have spiraled down there seems to be a magnetic force that wants to suck me deeper into that hole. Combined with the physical weight and lethargy comes an emotional heaviness. No big surprise there either. What does amaze me is how I can still be surprised by how easy it is to change the emotional heaviness just by putting my body in motion again. Energy gets stuck and if I don't actively make a point to move it, well I stagnate . . . just like the water in a pond that doesn't circulate in some way. Okay, so far none of this is earthshaking news.
So, yesterday I was giving myself a biofeedback treatment and what popped up to be addressed was to reduce self-destructive behavior. It was a bit of a shock, but only momentarily, because I had to quickly acknowledge that despite how well I thought I was handling all of the instability I was neither exercising nor making good food choices. Hey, depression doesn't just happen, it creeps up on people slowly because we don't want to cop to the little self-destructive things that are laying a solid foundation. The biofeedback wake-up was the first bit of information that played into this morning's awareness.
The second thing that happened was when I returned "home" to the house I will be in until the spring, I had an email from the lovely folks who own the house and live upstairs telling me how much they appreciated that I respected and cared for their home more than anyone else that had ever lived here. I emailed back to say that they had invested so much of their love into the house that it would feel awful not to take care of it.
The third piece is that I have been reading The Disapperance of the Universe, which is connected to The Course in Miracles. I have spent many years engaged in spiritual dialogue that reminds us we are really spirit and not to be so identified with the body, but this book really hammers home that we are not bodies and this is all an illusion. Bear with me now as I try and quickly tie this all together.
This morning I woke feeling an emotional heaviness and I recognized the connection to the sluggishness in my body. I also saw the lack of care of my body being connected with the "self-destructive" urge to be free of the small self, or ego identity, because so much of my energy has gone into focusing on my physical reality. Perhaps all along my weight struggle has been an ego-identity battle. One part of me wanting to validate my physical existence and the other wanting to break free of what tethers me to this world. The crazy thing is that neither of these parts represents spirit, for spirit is already free.
Whether being here in this body is an illusion or not, I am having this experience and I recognize the love that is in every cell of this body that keeps it working in such a miraculous way in spite of me. I'm so sorry that for one moment, on any level of my being, I wished to be free of this, and when I return to the ultimate home I have a sense that whoever is upstairs will be grateful for how well I took care of my physical homes--both body and Earth.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Follow Your Heart
Attempting to convey the pure awareness from stillness into language feels like placing a first footstep onto a virgin drift of glistening snow. I cross it anyway, because I want to get you and share the experience of the beauty and, of course, in doing so I have taken away from the untouched nature that first captivated me.
I am a person "with a good mind," but perhaps there is a downside to that when one's ultimate goal is to break free from illusion. A truly good mind recognizes its own limitations and can offer its services more humbly. Mine, however, has seemed bent on contorting in every possible direction to make sense of it all, like a dog chasing its tail to exhaustion. At the same time I know that my self-identified mind will never grasp the totality of spirit, because you cannot make something concrete which by its very nature is not. To pursue the path of "reason" as an entertainment is fine, but to opt for this as the way to inner peace is less than optimal.
How then does one carry stillness into appropriate action in the world? I can only describe what happens for me as paying attention to resonance. That coupled with a return to innocent perception, or seeing with physical eyes that don't categorize based on preconceived assumptions, leaves me free of inner conflict. Do I do that all the time? No, but I certainly know what the difference feels like.
I describe resonance, which I sense in my heart-center, as a type of energetic oscillation that is expansive and deep like the ocean. It contains true, unidentified power and engenders reverence. It is also what I feel when I am physically present with the ocean of this earth. It requires nothing and it offers everything. It is indestructible and ever present, although at times it feels fragile and fleeting.
I also describe resonance as a sort of magnetic attraction. It's not a choosing based on reasoned assessment, although that doesn't need to be absent. However, the bottom line determinant for me is, Does it feel right? Does it keep the inner osciallation in accordance with the expanded state? I'm working on not needing to apologize or compromise my joy because I can't give a good reason for my choices. I'm sure everyone has been around someone who is blissfully in love and irrationally giddy about everyone and everything they encounter. How often have you thought, They'll get over it and get more real? I know the type of love described does often change, simply because it is contingent upon something outside of us, but what if "getting real" came to mean operating from resonance?
Life works best for me when I align thought and action with this inner sense of peace. I could call it my spiritual GPS. We all know it, but some have denied it more than others. I think there is a fear of how anything will get done, or move forward if reason gets tossed out the window. How will we judge right action if there are no rules to apply? I'm not too worried about it, because my experience tells me that the intelligence greater than what can be managed by my human mind will have no problem with the details.
I am a person "with a good mind," but perhaps there is a downside to that when one's ultimate goal is to break free from illusion. A truly good mind recognizes its own limitations and can offer its services more humbly. Mine, however, has seemed bent on contorting in every possible direction to make sense of it all, like a dog chasing its tail to exhaustion. At the same time I know that my self-identified mind will never grasp the totality of spirit, because you cannot make something concrete which by its very nature is not. To pursue the path of "reason" as an entertainment is fine, but to opt for this as the way to inner peace is less than optimal.
How then does one carry stillness into appropriate action in the world? I can only describe what happens for me as paying attention to resonance. That coupled with a return to innocent perception, or seeing with physical eyes that don't categorize based on preconceived assumptions, leaves me free of inner conflict. Do I do that all the time? No, but I certainly know what the difference feels like.
I describe resonance, which I sense in my heart-center, as a type of energetic oscillation that is expansive and deep like the ocean. It contains true, unidentified power and engenders reverence. It is also what I feel when I am physically present with the ocean of this earth. It requires nothing and it offers everything. It is indestructible and ever present, although at times it feels fragile and fleeting.
I also describe resonance as a sort of magnetic attraction. It's not a choosing based on reasoned assessment, although that doesn't need to be absent. However, the bottom line determinant for me is, Does it feel right? Does it keep the inner osciallation in accordance with the expanded state? I'm working on not needing to apologize or compromise my joy because I can't give a good reason for my choices. I'm sure everyone has been around someone who is blissfully in love and irrationally giddy about everyone and everything they encounter. How often have you thought, They'll get over it and get more real? I know the type of love described does often change, simply because it is contingent upon something outside of us, but what if "getting real" came to mean operating from resonance?
Life works best for me when I align thought and action with this inner sense of peace. I could call it my spiritual GPS. We all know it, but some have denied it more than others. I think there is a fear of how anything will get done, or move forward if reason gets tossed out the window. How will we judge right action if there are no rules to apply? I'm not too worried about it, because my experience tells me that the intelligence greater than what can be managed by my human mind will have no problem with the details.
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