How Do I Achieve Inner Peace?

When I read these words to myself, sometimes on a daily basis, I become stronger in my belief that Change and Peace are on the same continuum and they always start (and end) inside of me.

"My whole being works best when I am able to achieve EQUANIMITY in life. I thrive when things are NOT tipped too much in one direction for too long. And when I realize EQUANIMITY for myself I experience a deep inner peace.

The entirety of everything is made up from one thing. That one thing is Divine. I call this divine thing Source because it exists eternally in, around, under, and through all “other” things.

I am just such an “other” thing. I am not Source as Source is the beginning of everything, but Source is ALL of me. This means that all the wholeness and perfection that Source is – I am. From this recognition I take confidence that I have the same power to manifest, just as Source does.

I accept that all of life is change and within all circumstances change is constant. From within this reality I create a subtle and gentle swing for myself in which I happily glide from here to there… and back again. From this place where I sit as things appear to shift  - my experience is always that ALL IS WELL.  I am Equanimity. I am Balance. I am Peace.

For this realization I give thanks. For this knowing I am humbly grateful.

Having written and read these words I let them go now.  I release these words into Source knowing the thing is already done and I am already Peaceful.  I release these words as I say, And so it is.”

Will you come and sit on my swing with me?

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A Daily Practice

"Fish live in streams

Birds nest in trees

Human beings dwell

In warm hearts."

~Japanese folk Zen saying

Keeping my heart open is the plan for the day. It is the plan for everyday. It is a mantra, a philosophy, a way of life.

Keeping my heart open allows all my periodic fears to be passers by and not live-in lovers.

Keeping my heart open allows change and surprise to be trusted companions instead of unwelcome apes leaving banana peels across my path.

Keeping my heart open creates wonder within every breath I take, beneath every step I make and behind every blink of my big 'ol fascinated eyes.

Keeping my heart open is my daily practice.

What is your daily practice that supports you NO-MATTER-WHAT?

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Don't Postpone Joy

Today I am here...

"Picture in your inner eye, your inner sight, four avocado seeds on the window sill. Three are suspended in a glass of water and have sprouted. One is still dry and papery and brown. Each of the sprouting seeds has its own character. One has two long roots, like two rubbery legs folding around each other in the bottom of the glass. Out of the top rises a cluster of tiny seedling leaves, and surprisingly, on this one, these leaves are white -- little tight white albino avocado seedling leaves, coming out of that big hard seed knob. Another has one short straight root and one straight shoot bearing green leaves at the top. The third has neither root nor shoot, but the whole seed has been split open by a thrust from inside, and the two halves shoved apart by the germinating seed force -- that little bunch of stuff, big as the end of your pinkie, shoving those big doors aside like a tiny Samson. It is a wonderful sight. And now let us look at the fourth seed, dry and papery and brown, nothing showing on the outside. But within are a life force and a living plantness which we cannot see with our ordinary eyes. If we are to behold the wrinkled old seed in truth, we have to behold it with imagination, with our inner eye. Only with the inner eye of imagination can we see inner forms of Being and Becoming. In this lifeless-looking seed there is a germinating center, totally alive and totally invisible."~ from The Crossing Point Selected Talks and Writings by M C Richards

I am the fourth seed today - "dry and papery and brown, nothing showing on the outside." I know when it is time I will robustly broadcast my own special leafy self - wide and tall and full. And I too will bear fruit which will bear seeds that will in turn bear fruit and so on and so on...

Knowing this is power. 

In the meantime I am NOT willing to postpone Joy until I sprout. For it is Joy that nourishes me. Yes - no matter the stage or state of my germination I will nourish Joy.

What do you nourish within yourself?

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Advocating for Meditation

"Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises. Like awakening from a dream, in the moment of pausing our trance recedes and Radical Acceptance becomes possible." ~tara branch

Everybody has their own unique natural state, their own baseline from which all their experiences begin. Some say we can move up the vibration of this - our unique natural state - to enhance our experience of life; to increase the amounts of JOY and LOVE we are able to know.

If you knew this to be the truth, why would you not set about immediately to begin doing it? 

"The realization of eternal truth comes at the expense of all of our illusions." ~adyashanti

Aha! Well I have had nothing to lose recently so my way of raising my vibration is through meditation. If I mindfully begin by setting my intention to make more abundant JOY and LOVE in my life and then practice quietly sitting still - in a way that makes sense for me - I have found I do generate just that. Not by direct effort, i.e. analytical planning out a strategy with steps and goals, but by simple use of my breath and my mind and my body in a standard practiced way. 

I use these same capacities, my breath, mind and body, in every other of life's routine situations. When I am brushing my teeth or washing my face or cooking a meal I use them to stay healthy, to shed cells, to grow and transform. So why not use my breath, mind and body (over time) to amp up my perception?

Like clothes that are worn in bright sunlight and washed and then hung on the line over and over again - Meditation has helped me to indirectly become slowly bleached of hardship and sorrow. My natural daily responses are fading away from material concerns and focusing more toward a wholistic embodiment of loving energy. I do not know where this will lead but this is the direction in which I am going! 

Oh I still go grocery shopping, make plans, art and money. But gradually I am coming to see with these newer more joyful and loving eyes. And I see that all is well. Really...I swear! And all this "all is well" jazz started by just sitting quietly and not trying at all. This is a feat in itself - I know.

And so unlike the way we have been taught to strive for JOY and LOVE. So alien and perverse and cliche! But it works for me. This is my chosen path. And I am still living the same life I have always lived - just better by every measure.

What does your path look like?

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An Open Invitation

Crazy good explanation...I am so grateful for it's joyful clarity! http://omeleto.com/199433/

Viva Les Questions!

"It can't just be about others because it's too depleting. It can't just be about ourselves because it's too lonely." ~Jason Garner

Everywhere everyday opportunities arise to help ourselves and to help others but where is the balance? How can we next make the right decision to help ourselves or to help others? What kind of mastermind can hone in on the right thing today to do right now?

These are an awful lot of questions. But I have found when I ask questions it is not my responsibility to answer them. It is only my responsibility to form them from a deep and meaningful place within my heart. And I know if I do this, from this place, the answers will come to me easily.

Takes a load off doesn't it? 

It is so great to know you don't have to have the answers. You only have to ask the RIGHT question! 

These questions are both the key to our suffering and the key to our joy. I am certain you are totally aware we all have easy access to our own questions. They just naturally exist in us all. They are as individual to each of us ad our own particular journeys. And they all contain the answers we are seeking within them!

Just ask them. 

Just ask them WITH FEELING from a sincere place deep inside your heart knowing in the asking the answer lies. 

I have found great peace in allowing myself to just live in my questions like this  - for I know the answers will come. 

Got any questions?

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Words as Tools

I think words are tools by which we fashion a life. What other purpose could there be?

Harmony 

by Madeline Williams

"I believe in Divine Harmony and nothing else. This means I have no belief in problems. No condition, situation or frustration can upset me, confuse me or destroy my equilibrium.

I do not believe there is any power in evil, therefore it cannot have any recognition from me. Absence of prosperity, love, self-expression or health is not evil for there is no evil. When any of these great necessities to my happiness appear to be absent from my life the cause is the absence of their equivalent in my mind. I now declare that these verities eternally abide in my consciousness.

Just as the truth about a problem in mathematics is its solution, the truth about any problem which confronts me is its solution now--not next week or next year, but now.

The truth about anything is all there is of that thing, and that is always good. 

Divine Harmony is now at work in my life and affairs because I believe in Divine Harmony and nothing else."

What words are in your tool box?

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