LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

As human beings we live in/with/as paradox. We are spiritual energetic beings incarnated on Earth in material bodies. We can have peak experiences; on a snowboard running over fresh powder, having diner with a loved one, in meditation or service or ceremony. Then we come home and get the flue, or the battery in our car dies on a cold morning when we are late for work, or some old emotional crud shows up for tea.

This season is the "darkest" of the year (where I live in the northern hemisphere), but it is full of stars and is a time for festivals of light. It is a time to celebrate the coming of light in the dark, the return of the Sun, the birth of the Christ child, the burning of the Hanukkah lamp, the flow of love in the human heart.

The paradox is only apparent. Spirit comes into matter as light, as energy, as love. The depth of matter, in the heart of the atoms, is the power that fuels the light of the stars. The light of love shines in our hearts from the inside out, and is inexhaustible. We are both matter and spirit and yet all is one. In Chinese lore Man exists between Heaven and Earth, weaving them together to create the ten thousand things.

When you welcome the light into the world, remember that you are also welcoming your own spirit, your own soul. Breath deep and relax, to make space so that you can be aware of how you too are a vessel for spirit to weave into matter, to co-create life and love here on Earth.

In this season of light take a moment to ask yourself how you bring light into your world? do you like to cook, to dance, to play sports, or write a poem. Is it in your smile or a kind word, receiving or giving a massage, or talking to the birds. We all have our unique lights to shine, for ourselves and others. Thank you for taking a moment or more to shine yours a bit brighter.

It is a time to light the lamps of our hearts, or perhaps to uncover them, as they are always lit, so that they may shine forth for ourselves and for others.

May your holidays be full of hope and joy

(© 12/08)

COMING TO A PAUSE

Many years ago, I was living in California and found myself in circumstances that led to embarking on a trip to the orient. In preparation I gave away or loaned out to friends everything I owned, with the exception of the contents of a backpack that I took with me. With a friend I boarded a plan to Japan, where we were to be met (maybe) by a friend of a friend of his. Not quite Columbus sailing off the edge of the world, but still a process that involved releasing most aspects of my external life. Just my friend and I heading off across the ocean.

Most of the time our lives are full of things we have planned. On-going commitments and schedules. Work hours, and tasks. Lunches, dinners or other activities with friends, partners, family. Books we are reading, music or movies to listen to or watch. Perhaps you are a list maker, checking things off that you set down last week, last month, or last year. Perhaps you have looser planning processes, broader intentions that lead to a flow of activities each day. In any case the percentage of time that really is free for spontaneous creation is generally constrained.

The mind likes to plan, even if we call it dreaming, and then to run our lives on the basis of these plans or dreams. Modern society tends to encourage this, down to the weekly shopping and laundry schedules.

I am being reminded again that it is good to pause, to pause all the mental tapes, lists and schedules to see if they are really what we would choose to be doing? to make room for asking what would bring our soul joy? to stand still for a moment in the whirl of life and being brave enough to let the balls drop.

This is not to say you have to sail off to Asia. It is not to say that you have to stop all the gears at once. You may choose to pick up most of the balls again, or restart many of the lists and programs. But doing it consciously, you will have perspective on which ones really serve you, and which you may intend to alter or phase out over time. Most importantly you have given yourself space to be surprised; to be inspired by spirit, by yourself, to begin to see how to shift how you do things so they are more in alignment with your soul, or to remember a passion that you put down years ago.

When we do this all that is not the planning mind, to communicate with us about what we might want to do; for our inherent creativity to inspire small changes or large shifts. To literally, or simply in our imagination, take our life apart, consciously look at it and then reassemble it with a greater degree of ownership.

Moving into December, heading for the Solstice this is a good time to pause, to allow our doing aspects to "hibernate" a little, so that we can be informed by our being aspects. This may seem a scary thing: that is part of the program that drives doing and planning. We may have a voice that says, but what if nothing happens, what if I let go and I lose it all? There was a night I woke up before that long ago trip, in an unfamiliar, borrowed, bedroom, full of fear and uncertain of who or where I was.

I was on the cusp of the most amazing adventure, full of many surprises and much growth. I can guarantee you that no matter how deeply you drop into the "void" it is a place of creativity and life and something will show up for you. The natural flow of life will fill things in again, no worries.

So treat yourself to a pause. Allow the whirling gears to disengage and stop, even for a little, and see what gifts show up for you. This is a space of creativity, of joy, of letting out soul breath a bit more into our lives. That is always a wonderful thing. And if you wonder how to do this? just ask. Ask spirit, or source, God or Goddess, your higher self, your angels, or your guides. The answer will come if you make space for it by asking and listening.

(© 11/08)

LIFE, DEATH, AND PRESERVATION

In Europe the cathedrals where built of stone, solid and lasting and are now some of the oldest structures on the planet. In Japan the oldest and most sacred shrine (Ise) is even "older", and yet this wooden structure has been torn down and rebuilt every twenty years for over 1300 years! Keeping it fresh and "pure".

It has been said that the body is the temple of the soul. There are different approaches also to maintaining our "internal" temples.

In Hindu cosmology there are three aspects of the supreme being: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. They represent, respectively: creation, preservation, and destruction; also the energies of Creativity, Love, and Truth.

The living manifest universe unfolds in cycles, in which these three aspects or phases are always present. Creativity is generally considered a good thing and is perhaps most closely associated for us with life.

The energies of preservation, nurturing, lovingly appreciating what has been created, are also something that we mainly applaud, even if they aren't quite as exciting or attractive to all of us.

When we come to destruction, however, we learn to be afraid, to judge this as "bad", "dark", something to regret or avoid. We associate it with death, with anger, with other things we think of negatively.

The heart of the matter is that we believe that the three phases are separate processes, that destruction is independent of creation. We think of destruction as the antithesis of creativity, rather than as an integral partner in the cycles of life.

Take a moment to consider how you conceive of your body on a day to day time scale. Do you relate to it as a fixed physical construct that may need maintenance and repair, but is essentially static? or do you relate to it as a dynamic pattern and system of energy and matter?

Scientifically our physical bodies exist as patterns do in the flow of a stream, the pattern persists, but the atoms and molecules flow through it continuously. If we stop these flows we die. Air, water, food, are flowing through us minute by minute, day by day. Energetically there are other flows that sustain and nurture us as well.

Life exists in flow, and flow consists of all three aspects, as elements move into the pattern, recreating it, sustaining it, and finally leaving it again.

We come to fear aging and change in the body that leads to, or is associated, with death or disease. When we resist destruction in life by rigidly focusing on preservation we close the door to creativity as well. The three aspects exist only in dynamic balance, and all three are necessary, inseparable. In seeking to hold onto "life" we often eliminate the space for it to enter in.

Even the great Cathedrals will crumble in enough time, but what of the Ise shrine? In another thousand years it will still be new and fresh. Is there a way to allow our temple to renew itself. I believe there is. Release the fear and mental energies that "see" the body as a rigid structure that we need to preserve at all costs, and open the door for the natural flows of energy and spirit to enter in.

The body is not a rigid object, but a living pattern of energy animated by our spirit or soul, it can heal itself and renew it self, just like the stream or the shrine.

When we release our fears and our mental efforts to avoid destruction=death=change=life we can open ourselves to integrating spirit and body in a way that sustains us, that keeps our temple fresh, and ourselves full of creative life energy. The body is meant to be the temple of the soul, not a static shell. Allowing for the three forces to rebalance in our being and our lives doesn't lead to earlier death, but to continued rebirth, growth, and evolution.

We become more alive, not less, and by letting go, we find what we were looking for all along.

(© 11/08)[read the full version @ http://www.wholebeingexplorations.com/spirit/writings.html ]

TIME TO STOP "TRYING"

Several years ago I was working on rebuilding a house I had just moved into. This involved a good deal of excavation, which I did over time, by hand. Good exercise and a great way to work out anger and frustration that I had coming up at the time. Having been a practitioner of T'ai Chi for many years I approached this task with an attitude of relaxing into it. The Tao of pick and shovel.

Even digging ditches can be done with effort or without effort. Effort being a mental attitude, not a measure of physical energy. Moreover the more I focused on relaxing while I worked, the less tired I got, the less I ached, and the more I got done.

Perhaps you have had experiences that are similar to this in other areas.

Lately I've been noticing a deeper layer of "trying" energy in myself and in clients. It is more fundamentally mental, being woven through the ego. I suspect that most of us know this feeling, of trying to do or be something, something that we are supposed to do or be, or something that will make us safe, or appreciated; fill in the blanks. This process is perhaps successful in the short run, but in the long run it is exhausting.

The story seems to go back to the early stages of life. As a new human we are a soul incarnating, bringing with us joy and enthusiasm, creativity and curiosity, and a wonderful menu of talents and interests unique to ourselves. We show up in a world that doesn't have room for all of who we are, or they way we are, or...

In these years we were forming not only our physical bodies, but our emotional and mental bodies, through which to express our souls and explore our world. However, to the extent that we were not received, these bodies, in particular the mental "ego" level, becomes a layer that serves more to protect the soul than to express it. It is this level of our being that "trys" .

Trying is specifically not fueled from our core. It is an outside-in process, rather than an inside-out process, fueled from the body level, the emotional and mental levels. It is therefore ultimately exhausting and in a sense futile. No matter how successful you are at "trying", you still have not created space to be yourself.

So as you move on through life you eventually have an exhausted inner young person who has been "trying" for most of your life, and she/he is not only tiered of trying but is probably pretty pissed off about the whole thing.

This can be true even for those of us who have some sense of who we are as spirits and souls. Part of us is tuned in to ourselves, but part of us is still valiantly "trying" to keep us safe.

It is time to talk with our "trying" part. In great gratitude to give him or her permission to take a long vacation, and to return with a new mission, to learn to create from the inside out, to express our souls rather than simply protect them.

It is time to look deeper into our being and find the even younger self that is our bright essence waiting to come out to create and play. However vulnerable or fragile this part may have felt or seemed when we were infants or children, this is actually where our power lies.

From the inside out we do not exhaust ourselves, we do not have to figure things out, we do not have to "try". We relax into ourselves and know who we are and, in time, we can see how that will manifest.

This is not something we have to learn, or find, or solve. It is within us always, and we get there by letting go of fear and effort, by setting our intention for going home and relaxing into it.

We are dong this together. With support from Spirit. Now.

What a glorious time to be alive.

(© 10/08)[read the full version @ http://www.wholebeingexplorations.com/spirit/writings.html ]

TRADING RESPONSIBILITY FOR JOY

On the rare occasions that I host a party or a dinner I have noticed myself entering a state that I think of as "host" energy. It is a somewhat timeless place due to the focus and presence in the moment as I work to ensure that things are done, people taken care of, that everyone has a good time. One task or conversation follows another and before I know it the evening is over and I come back to myself and the lower energy levels I usually function at.

Even if it was a good event, I usually feel a bit drained and wonder where all the time went. Perhaps I also feel some relief.

Its a different energy from attending someone else's party, though that may also be a busy time full of a series of conversations and other events that are not very dissimilar. The difference is that I am not the "host" I don't walk in with a sense of responsibility for anyone else, just for myself.

Recently I have been noticing parallels with other situations. Take parenting. Now that I am stepping out of that, I notice the relief of not being in host mode for my children, even though years of experience had dulled the edge a bit. As they have grown up I am glad to acknowledge that they can take on more responsibility for their own lives. I try to trust them as capable
human beings to do so.

But what about other guests, or even more balanced relationships? How about a new roommate, a new romantic interest, or a new co-worker? Do you go into "host mode"? or perhaps you might experience it as "wanting to make a good impression"? Some elements of "caretaking" might even slip in. Its probably not conscious, so check twice. To what extent do you "take responsibility" for
others when it might be reasonable to let them take it for themselves?

There's no correct answer here, just something to consider.

In some cases it is reasonable. If you have a guest from far away who doesn't know their way around town, they may need some help getting around, but are you also responsible for them enjoying their trip? or are they? If so to what extent? Are you creating their experience? or are you co-creating with them?

Back at the party: we are all adults, isn't it appropriate that I trust my guests to have a good time, or to ask if they need something? What happens if I let go of the weight of being responsible for everyone and just show up in joy and enthusiasm? Wow. A bit better for me! perhaps even better for them?

Not that I don't still do all the appropriate things as host, but the energy is very different. Instead of being in accelerated attention mode (read anxiety), I can just be present in joy and expectation that something great will unfold. I have more space to consider what is appropriate, and what may not be. In taking care of myself and creating space for others to take care of themselves, trusting that they can, do we not take steps towards true co-creation?

In trusting yourself, trusting others, you can ease the anxiety and burden of "responsibility" and open a whole different space. Perhaps you have already discovered this. Wonderful! Perhaps there are still situations or relationships where you can give yourself more permission to let go and make the switch. Let's start practicing.

Just think of a world full of joy and enthusiasm. What a great thing to create together!

© 10/08

HOLDING THE CENTER

As in the old Chinese curse it seems we are living in interesting times. Whether they are driven by the forces of galactic evolution, or the mass psychology of the human species, or both, or something else, we have everything from global warming to the potential meltdown of western capitalism unfolding before us.

Perhaps it is strange, but I find myself joyful and excited. I'm surprised myself. I've worried about these things most of my life. So why this amazing sense of joy and possibility?

Because you are waking up. Individually and collectively we are growing, healing, and waking up. There is a common intention to create community with a new purpose, or a renewed purpose, to serve spirit and the common good, to weave the sacred into daily life, to bring joy and love into our lives and our relationships.

This time the process is from the inside out. We are learning to face our shadows, to embrace our fears, to dive deep - where the still dark we discover is the foundation of possibility and creativity, out of which we can make new choices.

When we are not yet rooted in our central spiritual core, and the outer layers of the personality or the world around us (the manifest aspects of spirit and energy) dissolve, crumble, and transform, we are left lost in the darkness, afraid.

But when we have learned to reach inside, going deep, or high, or however you experience it, and have begun to connect with your high self, your soul, your source, then when the outer layers tremble and loose their structure, it is not I that is gone. There is a still quiet knowingness that spirit is deeper than the outer layers, and it is from this deeper place that you are strong, creative, and everything is possible.

From this place we can live in love and hope and joy, even amid flow and transformation.

The surprise today is to feel this welling up, when I wasn't sure yet that it was really there. I can feel that my brothers and sisters are also holding this space also, that around the world many of us have the intention to hold this center so that transformation can take place. Personally, for another, or in communities.

Feel for it, ask for it, intend it, and allow your self to be drawn to it. It is there for you, and it is surfacing. Remember this is really who you are, always there when we let go of fear and the need to hold the outside together. In the spaces the center emerges, we remember the sacred, the essential self, and in joy and love we can create a new world.

© 9/08

RIDING "ALONE"

I recently watched a wonderful movie about a healing journey taken by a Japanese man to a remote area of China. It illustrated how each healing journey is a personal process that we do by, for, and from, ourself. We can only go on it when we are ready and willing to show up for it.

The gentleman in the movie is, after many years, wanting to heal his relationship with his son, who is now very ill. He goes on a trip that is in many ways a pilgrimage determined by his son's own efforts to understand related wounds and heal himself. So from the beginning there is a link, between the father, the son, and their relationship. All three are being healed.

Throughout the journey various other people are also woven into this web of healing. Some of them come forward to assist, moved by the power of the father's sincere search for redemption
and connection with, and love for, his son. Others are themselves healed in parallel processes instigated by the father as he begins to realize the greater symbolic nature of his trip.

The story shows the power of the healing process, the spiritual quest, as each of us strives to heal our own wounds, reclaim our souls and our place in the web of love and life. When we are ready to own our life, our wounds, and our healing; we are never really alone, when we sincerely ask we receive. If we hold fast improbable assistance shows up.

It is said: God helps those who help themselves.

It is also important that we be ready to understand that healing may take other forms than we had envisioned. It may involve helping others to heal similar wounds, or our journey may inspire others to have the courage to begin a parallel process. We must be willing to follow the flow of the process wherever it leads us.

In the end we are responsible for our healing, our journey to wholeness, and our commitment to this in the face of obstacles is important. No one can do it for us, and we have to do it for and from ourselves. But we are less alone than we sometimes feel, spirit is always ready to help us. And as we heal it often affects others in deep ways, seen and unseen.

Life is a web, of which we are all parts. Each of our wounds is reflected throughout this web, and each healing journey is as well. So thank you all for the courage and determination to walk your own path. It lightens my world as well as yours.

Many Blessings

© 9/08

ONE STEP AT A TIME

I was up in the early morning headed for the airport at the start of a trip to the east coast. A cool summer night, a quarter moon rising, and my son excited about starting his new adventure in college.

Riding the shuttle on the first leg of a typical airline trip, which takes twelve hours to complete a four hour flight, I notice that part of me is worrying. Not about the next step in the process, check in; but about returning the rental car on the return trip five days later.

This part of my mind wants to review the whole trip over and over, trying to make sure that it will all go as planned. I have to laugh. Calling myself back to present time, the sweet, cool, night on the Colorado plains, I ask simply, "Is this step going
well? Yes. Is there anything I need to prepare for the next one? No.

OK, let's relax, trust myself and spirit.

A great opportunity to practice being present, knowing what the long range plan is, but allowing it to unfold one step at a time. This let events flow, and allowed me to feel good about the trip all the way until I got home again. Even in the traffic jams, both on the roads and at the airport.

Arriving home on another wonderful Colorado night, I find my grass is green and growing. It was never about me doing it all. The rains two weeks ago and cooler days have changed a yellow yard into green that needs to be mowed again. All while I was off doing other things. I am not alone.

Ahh, but now I am home. There is a new space in my life. I can considerwhat I want to fill it with. I find that it is a good step to know the plan and allow myself to trust it, but the mind really rebels when there is "no plan". Can I relax and trust the next step when I'm not sure what that is? Can I still remember that spirit has my back, that the tapestry of life has many weavers, seen and unseen?

Same lesson, next octave.

My mind doesn't have to fill this new space months and years ahead. In fact, I know I will have a great deal of help creatively filling it, especially if I am open to it being there. When I can relax my being, show up, be present, be appreciative and joyful, give my fears space, but let them go, then the creativity of spirit, my higher self and all the other levels, has space to gift me.

If I am too busy worrying about next month or next year, how can I notice what the next step is that's appearing right in front of me? or arising from inside me? Have patience and it will become clear. Allow the space to be present and open so that it may fill creatively. Let go of the "responsibility" to do it all, which is overwhelming. Settle into that deep place of connection and knowing, not of
what next week brings, but of spirit and self, of trust and faith, of what is already present right here, today. Then next week will begin to spin itself.

Blessings, it will be a wonderful life.

© 8/08

RELATIONSHIPS AND STORIES

I still remember when, 3-4 years after marrying a lady from a different culture, it dawned on me that we might have very different concepts of what marriage meant! But of course, "well Duh!"

How often do we assume we are on the same page in a relationship only to find out later that the stories were different. In every relationship there are actually three stories, mine, yours, and some form of ours.

When you go to look for a romantic partner, are you really open to discovering a new and unique human being, a soul manifesting through a unique personality and story? Or do you look for someone who is willing to fit a slot/role in our story of who we are? Perhaps not consciously.. but?

In many societies and traditional cultures, the story of our family, tribe, nation, becomes our story, and the personalities we encounter in our family form a large part of our personality. We may love them or hate them, but we usually work a line that leads towards or away from these initial relationships.

In these societies, as we grow older, we come together to form new relationships with friends, partners, spouses and the stories of these new relationships may already be determined in large part by the social and family stories. There may be more than one role, but we are often
looking for a character in our story, rather than an encounter with another soul.

In our modern world, we may think that we have escaped the stories. Perhaps we have just opened up our options and have so many more to choose from. We live in a country, and a world, were we encounter people who come from widely diverse cultural and familial backgrounds.

In creating a relationship with someone who does not inherently share the same basic story, there is almost always a challenge to find a common story. Perhaps there is a competition. Perhaps two people meet who are naturally leader and follower, though this is part of the story too. Some of us may not like our stories and be open to finding someone else's to step into, or may simply discount ourself to the extent we give up our story in order to have a relationship.

There are negotiations, battles, and sometimes conscious co-creation, but as a relationship deepens its story becomes more important, and the personal stories may diminish. As we are conscious of this process, we may think about what we will loose in personal freedom, where will we have to compromise, or give up power, in order to be in relationship?

This is still a dance of stories.

How often do we come to a relationship as two souls looking to explore each other and create a new story together? How far are we willing to let go of our existing stories in this process? Do we need someone who will match our story so we don't have to negotiate? Can we step into our soul being enough to let the old stories go and be excited about creating something new? Perhaps this is never 100%, but it shifts the process from a dance of stories, to one of people. There are no right or wrong answers here.

Perhaps in the end the more we are willing to let go our story does not, as we often fear, have to be a process of losing ourself in a relationship, but can be a conscious, loving, process of choice, through which we are able to find more of our selves and our soul. A process of true co-creation of a new shared story with a partner, in which we are both aware of ourselves as souls who create stories, rather than competing personalities that have been created by stories.

May all your creations be joyous.

© 8/08[read the full version @ http://www.wholebeingexplorations.com/spirit/writings.html ]

CHANGE AND POSSIBILITY

There is change in the air this summer. The finishing of old cycles, completion and transition.

Among other things in my life, my son, and youngest child, will fly east in a month to start his college education. For him this is a big change and the beginning of many new aspects of his life, some anticipated, and some unknown, not even dreamed of yet. It would be reasonable that he might be nervous, but my hope is that he can view this as a space of possibilities and adventure.

For me it is also the ending of a long period of daily parenting, a role that has been a source of many things in my life, including much pride and joy. It has often been the one consistent thread when everything else has been in flux. A part of me has been morning the transitioning of this role, more than I would have expected, and this is good.

Another part of me is feeling into the space and openness that will be in my life, room to focus on other things, other relationships, room perhaps for unanticipated surprises, and this feels great. I can feel the sadness, that wants to morn an emptiness, and also the joy that there will be room for new fullness.

As I help my son prepare for his new life, I notice a tendency to go into that famous parental worry place. It has been a great gift to sit back and ask, is this really an expression of my love for him, or is it perhaps a marvelous space in which I project my own doubts and fears. Are these mental constructions more about the past, reflecting my own struggles and experiences, than they are about his future? I suspect they are.

If he is a bit unconcerned with these preparations, what does it serve to fill him with an urgency and anxiety that is really my own? Pretty easy to answer that one! Rather it is a wonderful time to release my old fears and worries, to trust his ability to navigate his own life, or to learn how, and expect that he will open to all the wonderful possibilities that are there for him.

An old friend recently sent me the link to a wonderful video which presents many aspects of life simply and eloquently. Among these is the suggestion that when change comes along, we look for the opportunities, the possibilities, for wonderful things to happen. When we can do this life opens to us and we begin to find the wonderful and beautiful in the world around us.

In my own journey this year, spirit has several times shown how it is from the spaces in between what we think exists that possibilities arise. In between the atoms lies the energy of life and the fields of what is possible, waiting for us to relax enough, to let the structures open enough, to create all the things we can imagine and more.

So as my son prepares to leave home, I take this opportunity to recognize more of my own limiting fears and release them for us both. I breath into the openness of new possibility in gratitude for another gift that he has given me. I set him free to fly without my fears weighted around his feet. Joyously grieving the change and transition I wait in wonder for the possible to enter in.

May you find your dreams in the spaces that open through changes in your life.

© 7/08

BEING BEST

How often have we heard these words, directly spoken or indirectly heard in movies, read in books, sung in songs? We are urged to compete, with others, with ourselves, with nature, but to be the best in any of many senses, from an Olympic athlete to a loyal friend. All worthy goals.

We may have been told to get the best grades, swim the fastest race, be the nicest person, to be better than someone, or everyone, or just to better ourselves. Excellence is defined in many ways, but we all want to excel, it is natural and part of us as human beings.

Recently a question floated through. How often do we think of being best as something out there? as opposed to in here? or to put it another way: Do we look around and select something that is already defined and work to be best at it? or do we take the time to go inside and ask what are we best suited for in life? Where will we naturally excel? What gifts to we bring to the world?


This may seem like a slight distinction, and like many things in life we may be working with both sides of this question at the same time; but are we living our life to be the best version of us? or are we living it to achieve the positive regard of others? Take a moment to settle into the question, the answer is for you, not for me. There is no wrong answer, just information and choices.

Do we ask what does the world expect us to be, or want us to be? or do we ask who am I? It is usually easier to answer the former question, but surely it is ultimately more satisfying to take the time to pursue the latter.

No one can be better at being you than you are. When you find your heart and it's bliss they will lead you to what you can uniquely offer to the world. You, at least, will be satisfied, but I expect "the world" will notice as well.

© 7/08

LET NATURE FEED YOUR SOUL

I recently spent several wonderful days in the mountains of northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. Leaving schedules and cell phone behind, I moved into a space more of being than of doing.

I found myself wanting to simply sit on a high rock overlooking a green valley, or by the stream rushing through the valley. Feeling into the earth, the water, the sky at night full of stars. Letting nature's rhythms flow through me, opening to them intentionally. Staring at the flames of the fire, or feeling the energy and grace of the horses in the pasture, relaxing into a beingness that is full of life and movement.

Nature blends its doing and being. She is coherent and flowing in a way that I don't often feel in my daily human life.

I let my mind go, floating away like the clouds, releasing the things that need to be done, that I shouldn't forget, that hover like mosquitos that refuse to let me relax. I find a new mind, soaring like a redtail, riding the flows of wind and water, opening awareness to the trees, plants, and animals. There goes a yellow swallowtail, or three, playfully dancing through the sunlight.

I feel this mind in my being, feeding it with the breath of awareness. Coming back to my essential self, the soul that remembers it is connected, and that in that connection it knows without having to figure and think. It drinks in the experience of the natural world, flowing and expanding with joy and gratitude.

Today I am back in Boulder, but I am not quite the same. I have brought home with me some of the web of life from the mountains, and permission to breath into it and remember. My mind is not so busy yet, my beingness is still palpable, the natural rhythm is here also, underneath in the still and quite, even in the city. I can carry it with me, nourishing it through out the day, through giving it space, or taking a walk outdoors.

Find a tree blowing in the wind, or a flowing stream, animals in pasture, birds or butterflies, or the clouds up high. Allow your being to feel the natural rhythms that it remembers when you let it. Know that your soul is being fed just being with them and intending the resonance. Nothing more required.

Rejoice in your own natural being.

© 6/08

THE SMELL OF A SUMMER ROSE

Summertime and the roses are blooming.

Find some and take time to smell them.
Be fully present, smelling them.
Let their smell fill your awareness.
Not a sniff, or two.
Breath them in, over and over.
Stretch into the experience, reach for it from your heart.
Notice what comes forward and what fades away.
Let go of the thinking, focus on the feeling, the being of this.
Imagine this smell flowing through your whole body, how
does you experience roses as a state of being?
Breathing life through the rose.

Let memories of roses come and float away.
Stay with this rose for long enough to know this smell unfiltered,
right here and now.

When you have been present with this rose, allowed your being
to reflect and communicate with it, slowly come back into the world,
and notice where you have been.
Notice the "waking", the mind coming back on line.
If you are fortunate it may take a while.
Notice the "dying", which aspects are going off line.
Is this not like waking from a dream?

Over the minutes and hours return to your experience,
call up the smell of the rose.
How does your being react?
How much of the full experience returns?
Does the mind slow and stop?
What parts come alive?
Practice this.

When we have intense experiences, intimate experiences, meditations,
or dreams, are they not all alike?
We shift our awareness to other levels of being, we are "transported".
Take this chance to notice where you go and how you "return".
How much do you retain?
or is the mind in a hurry to "wake up", to "get on", to "be real"?

These transported states are quite real, just different.
Carry the smell of the rose with you, in your being.
Allow yourself that state, the awareness of smelling the rose,
filtering into the rest of your life.

Is it not wonderful to live your life through the smell of a rose?

© 6/08

RESOURCES OF THE MIND

Some morning take the time to really feel the water in the shower as it flows over you. Listen to the sounds it makes. Smell the soap. Be aware of your body, all the aspects of mind that are tied to the body. Thank them for handling the details of the most complex organism we know of. Be aware your senses and of the bodies sensations. Bringing your mind back from racing already through your day. Allow yourself to really enjoy being a human in a body taking a warm shower.

Step up now to your emotions. Many of you are already there, function naturally in your emotional body. But there are still places you like to go and places you are challenged to give space to. How much of us, both light and shadow is under the surface emotionally? Too much joy can be as threatening as too much fear. But there is great knowledge and wisdom here.

Allow yourself to remember other showers, other times you felt water on your body, other times you were warm (or cold). Follow the chains crisscrossing back into the past. Llike nuclear particles decaying in a shower of sparks in a scintillator, each chain activates others, by association, on and on.

In the sum of these pathways there is depth and wisdom, experience and knowledge. These levels of mind remember how to play, how to relax, how to love. Other parts of yourself that were assigned to tasks many years ago, are waiting to be assigned new tasks that serve you better. Even the hurts and pains carry within themselves the knowledge of how to complete, to release. The wisdom of the body to heal itself is true on many levels, when we listen.

Now, imagine you are holding a ball between your hands, perhaps about 3 inches across. Feel the ball. Or take the sense of water flowing down your arms and let it jump across the gap in your hands. If you intend it, there is something there. Feel into that in a different way, and you are feeling the energy of your being. Allow yourself to begin to feel your whole energy body, as the water washes away any tension down the drain. Breath into it. Feel the ball, and yourself, expand and contract with the breath.

Your energy bodies carry a whole different level of wisdom, a new way of being and feeling in the world. This is information that some level of your mind is always receiving. Only when it becomes very strong, a hunch perhaps, or a sense of something do most of us listen to it. Perhaps we wind up meeting an old friend, or turning a corner to see a beautiful sunset, or it may save your life. We can learn to hear it all the time.

We all have so many resources, that we are mainly not trained to be aware of or tap into. They are also a source of joy, creativity, and imagination, and can help us to create lives well beyond our conscious imaginings, all the time.

Playing with them in the shower, or on a trail or even in the office, and you will develop them. Having the intention is the key. Playing is how we learn. Know that you are much
more than you think, and you have resources along the way.

Blessings and enjoy the journey.

© 5/08[read the full version @ http://www.wholebeingexplorations.com/spirit/writings.html ]

WILLFUL EYES

Perhaps you are used to thinking about your eyes as a doorway that lets light and vision into your mind? Through them we absorb images that tell us what is happening in the world around us. We usually think of sight as a passive experience, like watching a movie.
When a scientist observes his experiment, however, quantum mechanics tells us that it is not entirely a passive process. Her observation will, subtly or grossly, affect the process that she is observing, will influence the outcome of the experiment. This influence is not simply selective observation, the mind filtering its inputs (which happens all the time), but is such that the events themselves are altered by the observations process.
Remember the experience of riding as a passenger in an automobile with a driver who you didn't fully trust? Perhaps they are angry, or tired, or for some other reason aren't giving the road their full attention. You may have noticed yourself trying to make up for their lack of attention by increasing your own, leaning into the curves, breaking with your feet, or perhaps you have found yourself willing the car around the curves or to break at a light? Now your eyes are actively trying to manage the world around you, to create your experience, manifest a positive outcome.
In fact, we often use our eyes to create what we see, to will our life into existence, either literally or figuratively, in our imaginations.

The other night I had a chance to experience a period of being blindfolded. I recommend you try it sometime. I have noticed before that when the visual mind "gives up", besides making space for our other senses to receive more attention, something else happens. The willful mind relaxes. Suddenly I realize all the energy that has been going into "keeping the car on the road". When this effort ceases there is a sense of calm and peace that is unexpected and perhaps somewhat unfamiliar.
In our lives who is it we don't trust? Ourselves, others, the divine? who is the driver that we need to help out by adding our will to theirs? How much life force do we loose through the eyes, trying to shape our world, to keep our life on track, because we don't trust it to happen otherwise?
The other night after a period of time of being led through a process, a period in which I could relax and just be in a unique way, I am invited to take off the blindfold, and a little later to dance. I find that I am certain of my moves, I know where the spaces are on the floor. I move easily and without effort through those spaces, without fear or anxiety that I will be anywhere other than where I should be, that I will trip, or run into someone else, even though they are all moving too. Without my willful mind I am able to show up and be present in a new way, that is far easier than the way I am used to navigating my life. Relaxed, fun, free. I am more fully aware of what is, using my eyes to see rather than create, I glide effortlessly across the floor, joyfully weaving the dance with everyone around me.

Give the mind and the will a vacation. Stop projecting what "should" be there, and allow yourself to dance with what is, in joy and gratitude. May you be surprised at how beautiful, effortless and graceful the experience is.

© 5/08
[read the full version and an accompanying meditation @ http://www.wholebeingexplorations.com/spirit/writings.html]

PARENTS COME IN PAIRS

Coasting down Vail pass, westbound on a spring morning several years ago, I am meditating on the emotional attitudes to driving that I absorbed from my parents growing up. I have long been aware of my father's tendency to be angry more easily behind the wheel than in many other situations, something that has at times made me nervous as a passenger, both with him and with other people as well. I have also at times noticed the same thing in myself. On this morning I suddenly notice in myself that this is my mother's fear, which had become my fear of his anger. Which became my fear of my own anger, which arose in part as a reaction to her fear and resulting control.

Round and round the mulberry bush we go.

Often times, as we sort through our lives, we notice the affect that one of our parents has had on us. One of them is, perhaps, much more obvious and we focus on that one. We work hard to let go of their energy, to release programming, beliefs, emotional charges: but with only partial success. What I have realized this morning however, as I glide now past Vail and on west along I-70, is that I have incorporated both halves of their dynamic, and that becoming aware of the second, less visible, component can be a key to clearing the full effects of the more visible one as well.

The doorways that let in the influence of one parent may have their source in the other parent. As a couple their dynamics matched up, and we often take on both parts. So I take on the fear of one parent, which creates a doorway to take on the behavior of the other, and to be fearful of similar behavior in other people as I grow up. I am myself both angry and afraid, an internalized dynamic that has more than one part, each triggering and regenerating the other. Cut off only one head and the other is still there, in the shadows, from which to regenerate the first. Like the Hydra of legend we need to address them all at once.

So whenever you come face to face with aspects of one parent that you have taken on or are in resistance to, look in the shadows for the other, and notice how that side of the dynamic affects your life as well. Perhaps this is the key to unlocking some stubborn old issues.

Breathing deeply, relaxing into who you are, be freer to go forth without the fear, without the anger, without the control or self-limitation. Show up in the moment as happy and playful, following your soul's calling, and creating your life from your own vision and inspiration.

PS. It is important to remember that this has everything to do with understanding our own process and where we have taken our programming from. It is not about judging our parents, as that will actually make clearing things more difficult.

© 4/08
[read the full version @ http://www.wholebeingexplorations.com/spirit/writings.html]

SUNNY SKIES and DARK THOUGHTS

This afternoon the sky is clear and blue as only Colorado and other high dessert skies are blue. The sun is warm, if not hot. Fruit trees are beginning to bloom, as are the little spring flowers in the grass and along the trails. The air smells fresh and clean as the snow on the high mountains. Its about as beautiful a day as you can imagine.

My emotional body responds to this beauty, relaxes, opens, feels happy. Its an easy day to drop into my heart and breath and be grateful to be alive.

Then I notice my mind doing some strange things. It's actually trying to talk me out of the way I'm feeling! It skips right by the fact that it may snow tomorrow (this is Colorado after all) to the fact that its tax day, that a client postponed, that various other things are not perfect in the accounting department. One after another it's tossing these dark thoughts at me, challenging my right to feel happy and enjoy the day.

None of these things affects the present moment, like tomorrow's weather. None of these is cast in stone either, and in fact they may well turn out to be opportunities in disguise. Like tomorrow's weather everything may be different by the time it shows up.

So I ask my mind what the deal is? Well, you can't just feel good for no reason can you? comes the answer. To which I say why not? You've talked me into feeling bad many times for no real reason, haven't you? say I. No reply to that one. Why should it be that we need a reason to feel good? or to feel anything for that matter?

We feel what we feel when we feel it. If we can let ourselves have this then the feelings come and go and we move on. If the mind gets ahold of them and sticks them in a story, or connects them with various memories (in order to explain or justify them) then we start looping. Feelings to memories/story to feelings to.. over and over.

So today I simply choose to connect to the day around me and feel good, be happy, use this as another lesson in what living with an open heart feels like. It may not change tomorrow's weather, any more than my mind can change today's, but I can enjoy today, and perhaps enjoy the snow tomorrow as well.

And perhaps, a little voice says, if you allow the emotional body to cultivate feeling good, in spite of the mental programs, we can learn to feel good most of the time, even when challenging things come.

Choose love not fear, and have a wonderful day.
© 4/08

MANIFESTING FROM THE HEART

I am standing in front of the mirror in the morning, doing those things that one does between the shower and breakfast, getting ready for the day ahead. This particular morning I have woken up with some fear in my belly over moving ahead with aspects of my life, anxiety about projects I’m working on, how well the manifesting is going in the career sphere.

As I’m working in front of the mirror, I’m thinking about how I ought to feel. I know that I need to be in a less anxious and more positive space for successful manifesting to occur. I begin to notice that my mind is trying to think me into that positive space: that relaxed, open feeling of gratitude and certainty in the bounty of the universe.

I have learned some time ago that willing things in to reality, while possible in theory, is exhausting in practice and in any case not the way my being creates most naturally. Holding the appropriate emotional state, full of gratitude and certainty in the flow of abundance, and allowing that to flow through the vision of what I am intending to attract into my life is both easier and more powerful.

So my mind has backed off a level, but still believing that it has the answers, or is supposed to come up with them, it is now trying to will the appropriate levels of surrender and gratitude and trust. This is pretty funny. I begin to find my amusement.

I also realize why this isn’t really working too well. My internal narration is writing out the description of the emotional state it thinks I should be feeling, but I am still being held in the mental levels of awareness. So I check in on the feeling levels. I drop down into my heart, which has felt these things and knows where they are and remembers how to get there again.

Letting my heart open, as my awareness shifts into the world of feeling and flow, and releasing the mental narration, I begin to breath deeper, to relax into that place I have been looking for. Now I am feeling for it, the anxiety is dissipating and space is expanding inside me for gratitude, for receptivity of the support and abundance that the universe is already sending towards my intention and vision.

As I headed into my day in a different place than before, I am grateful for this gift of awareness from spirit, and the reminder that my heart is powerful and can work many things more easily than my mind, grateful to experience again the ability of the heart to find the way back to myself, to gratitude, joy, and receptivity. This is the proper space for manifesting dreams.

May these come ever more easily for all of us. Blessed be
© 3/08

[read the full version @ http://www.wholebeingexplorations.com/spirit/writings.html]