Monday, June 22, 2015

Closing the Gap


"This new-ish internal gyroscope is being built within me. It invites me to balance things out more easily. Still no itinerary. Still no destination. But lots of budding awareness' to make note of --- like Darwin, uncovering Origin of Species." 
~me from first blog post on november 5, 2013


How far apart are who you are and what you want to be? I am right there - a bullseye! Creating this crazy life that asks for everything I desire and works toward being joyful and surprised has somehow become my reality. Somehow the gap for me has closed tremendously!

How did this happen? 

I recall it started by choosing to be Deliberate. It was in a class and we were asked to pick a quality we wished to embody. Did not have any exacting designs for what I was going to be deliberate about, I just wanted to take hold of my life and make sure that anything that happened from that point forward would be of my own choosing. The catch? There is always a catch. I had to let go of knowing what I expected my life to look like.

Thus I entered a new state of ALLOWING.

As I think about this now, it was this Grace that allowed me to aspire less toward concrete manifestations of life and more toward ephemeral sensations of living. The everyday choices about food, money and shelter were important - yes. But they became only secondary. My larger focus - to be Deliberate - became primary. Thus I began a life that gave up on hoping for the best and chose a life to be the best I could desire.

From that point on I began to ground myself. Attention was given to signals my nervous system sent to my body, to the messages of yearning from my soul's heart and to the dream world that sang softly to me at night and in the early morning hours. I gave them a voice - a say in what came next.

In giving these invisible aspects of myself more weight they became my guides…my trusted guides. Like any new relationship it took time to build that trust. At first they helped me to discern best practices and procedures for living my life day to day. Gradually I learned I would receive a useful answer to any question if I just posed it in a meaningful way to this new guidance system I was developing. 

This inner listening begat outer doings. And thus slowly profitable experiences were built up, encouraging doing more of the same. So you see I was creating the life I wanted while simultaneously living the life I currently had. And my emotions, desires and dreams, things I had judged as peripheral, became vital to me as my way of connecting places of spirit to places of concrete and corporeal form. It took some time, but I became one who manifests.

So now I know these semi-tangible organs - my emotions, desires and dreams - reside within me. And I am living from inside out! As I continue to build up my ability, my awareness to these my guides, I know they will always lead me toward that place where I feel at home...safely unbounded and free.

I still do not have a destination, but every day I am more and more OK with that because where I am right now is just fine!

How far apart are who you are and what you want to be?

Tag You're It!

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Love and Mercy


"Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you are." 
~rumi
1207-1273


I know DEATH really well. It has been my companion, my teacher and friend. Living intimately with ideas of endings, sorrow, pain and uncertainty informs me well. I have learned about accepting what is. I have been trained to recognize and acknowledge the importance of joy. And most of all I have come to understand that love never dies.

Along with all of this comes a finely honed understanding of the importance of the forms showing up right here in front of me. Did you know they all have deeper meanings assigned them? They are there if you are willing to look! I learned this when one was abruptly taken away.

But things are shifting.

It is LIFE that now beckons to me. It is laughter, playfulness, uncertainty and acceptence that wants to cheat out the space DEATH has impounded for so long. Life wants to be lived, to thrive in the light of great newnesses New friends. New loves. And new adventures. 

In this I am a bit caught.

I am holding back my Self. I am reserved and weary knowing what manifests within the structures of time. Knowing unknown pains and sorrows to come. Is LIFE really this kind of battlefield? Is heartache really just one more medal to wear and weigh me down in the course of each hallowed day? 

Or can I wage LIFE not as a war, but as an experiment - experiencing fully, soul to soul, moment to moment, all it's loves and mercies? Using what I now know, can I discipline myself to practice enjoying with a light touch the beauty of holding hands, the warmth of being acknowledged, the crescendo of an understanding between you and me and the resulting smile in your eyes?  

Only time has these answers, but I sure do like the questions?

Don't you?

Tag. You're It!

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Find Your Wealth


"Wealth is the ability to experience life."
~henry david thoreau
1817-1862

Would you say, "No thank you." if someone came to your house and handed you a million dollars? It is fair to say this is a dream scenario most people would love to experience. This dream scenario contains nothing but good stuff. Within it are elements of ease, excitement, joy, liberation and boundless new opportunities. In addition to all that...according to this fantasy we do not even have to make an effort. This prize comes to seek us out! We could still be in our pajamas when that big check from the universe shows up on our doorstep. You could just be sitting there at home mindfully minding-your-own-business and BAM YOU ARE A MILLIONAIRE!

But what are the odds? To my way of thinking pretty-damn-good... IF you are willing to consider - the present moment as the prize. 

The present moment is handed to us every day, all the time, over and over again. Within it are the same promises of liberation and boundless new opportunities. It contains all of life in just the kiss of a second and then another and another and another. This present moment stuff never stops coming.

Within your awareness of the present moment are a bounty of riches. The plasticity of eternity is joyfully experienced everyday constantly in the ever changing course of hours and in the ever changing stream of our own consciousness.
So if this phenomenon is truly knocking constantly in order to give to us it's gifts...why aren't we waking up and answering the door?

It isn't called present for nothin' you know!

Knock, knock! Who's there?

Tag You're it!

Monday, June 1, 2015

Discipline?

"A true discipline is never a restriction, only an affirmation… not oppression, but a joyous concentration of energies!"~david spangler


Well - this is news to me! I am an artist with a creative spirit which cannot be rangled or contained. Yup - this is how I have always classified myself. I am a seeker of original new thoughts and a rejector of the disciplines of regular everydayness.

 
But what if…could it be true that that which I commonly relegate to the ash pile, Discipline, is not a cage but a liberator? Got to think about this...my brain hurts.

Have you ever wondered "What the hell am I doing here?" or "How is this going to end?" or "What is my purpose?" These BIG questions are tacked and stacked three deep on the bulletin board of my frontal lobe because I want answers. And I always want them NOW!

But these answers are not easily got from a well trained mind, much less the vacant grassy field of my brain. So, for me, these power questions are asked and then just let go of… not because they are unanswerable, but because they are unanswerable right now and they are unanswerable by the intellect. Rainer Maria Rilke says...

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

Having an experience of equal parts discipline and serendipity is important to me. This balance evens everything out and does one more thing!

Equanimity between organization and uncertainity opens a door through which new light can shine. My discipline of honoring chance   balanced with joyful effort teases forward my path; a path wide open to possibility, a path presently unimaginable, a path greater than mine own eyes can see.

This boundlessness in front of me excites my everydayness!

How do you create enthusiasm?
Tag You're It!