When Guidance arrives………… core spirituality………… my personal journey

When guidance arrives what do you do?

When guidance shows you will you see?

When guidance whispers do you listen?

When guidance stops you will you stop?

When guidance pushes you do you go?

When guidance surrounds you will you hide?

When guidance appears in another will you recognize its face?

When guidance takes you down how far will drop?

When guidance swerves and changes the direction will you keep going straight on thru?

When someone else shares their guidance do you take this on as if it is yours?

When guidance appears in any form or no form will you deny it?

What is YOUR EXPERIENCE?

Who is doing what here? The presence of each of us is engaged in life thru experiences that lead one to another, everything is linked. Every experience has some component of discovery. When I lose myself in physicality, when I become confused, or when I am attempting to make new changes I ask the questions to myself that you read above. my checklist to ascertain my sense of presence with life.  We are meant to investigate and learn the practice of choice thru the act of perceiving guidance in our connection to life. That we develop zones of this in our lives deepens our sense of the inter relatedness of existence and the continual flow of information arising.

The doer in me wants to take action, the other parts know when not to. Deciding on guidance is a personal matter, yet we all share what this means. Guidance often links us to each other in unexpected ways, at unexpected times with unexpected people. Am I open to this? I ask myself. frequently we can see individuals around us who in the midst of all the signs, signals and innate guidance, for whatever reason ignored it and had to repeat or suffer further as a result of choices made. I have seen how we “think” we have all the answers and thus we miss it .  Not choosing to pay attention has potent validity as does choosing. it is all ok….. these are our growing edges.

Life is inexplicably self informed thru everything and nothing. Life informs us thru one another, and its various forms. Life is happening not to us, as is often the perception, it is happening thru us. We are life itself ! Every experience is just that an experience in the ongoing ebb and flow of life. Life learning about something. Human life is learning a lot. I watch as we stumble and fall, repeat and then get up and redirect. Its all an amazing unfolding. Always different yet not really, it is all the same for each of us eventually. all experience contains some form of knowledge to witness.

I have been accustomed for some time with being approached in matters of guidance. And my most common experience with people seeking it is ….not realizing it. People actually believe there is no guidance! I like to remind these people that it is innate to have guidance. Even the experience of no guidance.. the silence…… is a sort of guidance ….telling us to remain in the mystery, to be still, to pay more attention or to take action with the information we already have. There is a lot of stumbling around, hesitating, looking the other way, unwillingness to cooperate, resistance, and confusion and denial. ( See previous post on Guidance)

Paying attention to our experience……………….. is actually what we need to do to experience guidance.

When we choose to engage in distractions around what matters to us, when we choose to over think and analyze things we disengage from the simplest forms of what we are experiencing. When we engage in rote answers, dogmas, and other people’s ideas of what is showing up for us we can navigate ourselves out of any kind of natural guidance.

I have been shown many many things in this life. Why is this? I believe it is because I am looking! I want to know. I am focusing on the present to the now-ness of my experience. In fact staying in the now is one way to avoid dropping into the past whenever guidance is informing us. Calling myself into the present moment will activate guidance I have noticed this many times.

There is a place of nothing and stillness we can learn to occupy inside our selves that is an opening into the guidance life is offering. When we fill all the empty spaces with stuff,  with busyness, and too much information, too much DOING……………….we miss out.

I turn off the television . I turn off the noise. I turn off all the dramas. I turn off my own opinions. I turn everyone else’s opinions off too. I take a shower, go swimming, I stretch, I spend time doing very little. In Hawaii where I live, one of my favorite times is taking time out in the breezes, the trade winds here are marvelous. Just resting as they blow across the body is very soothing. So any of us can find ways to still the self…. however you find this….. do it.

 In my out of body experiences traveling thru the universe where I encountered THE LIGHT, THE source of our lives I FELT THE IMMENSE  capacity of a loving source, everything we need is here for us.  I look to this love everyday in my physical self. If we “think” we do not have what we need then somehow, someway we may adjust ourselves. The most valuable “thing” we need though is our willing participation and our capacity to pay attention to what ever arises.

There is no real mystery to guidance, although there is one prevalent block, a giant lie perpetrated all over this earth. That is that we are powerless….. and recognizing that this one idea, this one feeling inside us can “freeze ” our capacity to transcend limiting situations and prevent us from that idea of honoring mystery as a sacred opportunity

. Even the silence and mystery can be the guidance.

The willingness to trust that we have what it takes to get thru not knowing.

Cultivating the edges of our awareness and learning to perceive thru our not knowing, allows the space for the guidance.  This will teach us we have the answers all along. Developing skills that are like sonar, telepathy, wisdom, deep clarity, infinite compassion and acceptance of the next new thing arising. We are all learning how to shift out of our linear left brain dominant patterns of seeing. Breaking up, breaking thru our little versions of logical reality.

 Be prepared for a bigger picture of what this really means as we utilize guidance we see how life is bigger than any box we have assigned it! There is a willingness in this to grow that underlies using guidance.

Another fine aspect of guidance is support. The new kinds of support that do show up once we act on guidance. I have been astounded, verified, confirmed, and propelled many times thru acting on guidance. Fantastic synchronicity will arise along with even greater challenges.

Guidance and experience go together…. not against or without one another, is a fantastic mindset to learn that serves the spark of divinity growing within us.

core of spirit within me reflects this day.

shared with aloha

Who I was Born To Be (Lyrics) – SUSAN BOYLE

In light of my previous post here I like to listen to this song. This truly expresses the celebration of life.

Service and self centeredness………………core spirituality ………………..my personal journey

What is service? The call that arises when we help someone. To assist another. To do something selflessly. There is, I would call it within me, an urge to help.

I do not know exactly where this arises from within me. I know that I purposely felt it. I purposely chose a field of work that causes me to carry out this role to learn to be of selfless service.

My relationship to service began in a dark place. For the telling of the story I will begin at the time of my early youth.

I remember as a child that I felt the urge to serve somewhere very strongly in my early teens. Though before that my memory is more needing help. I grew up in a Catholic school environment and the story of the saints lives were a regular part of my daily life. I am certain my awareness of wanting to help initially arose from needing it so badly myself. The feeling was just terrible. Living in an unhappy alcoholic infested environment, where day to day life was swallowed up in the pain my parent’s suffering out any reprieve. I became aware that help was needed here… big time. That memory and my own youthful desire to ask god for help was a regular cry inside my heart.

Pain had a way of opening me beyond myself. looking back I see this now.

In those early days I was somehow very moved by the biographies of the saints. (everyone around me seemed to be so crazy) I loved to read and I made frequent visits to the school library where we had rows and rows of books about the lives of the catholic saints. I read every book on the subject in the library, until I had to go to downtown to the BIG library for even more!

It is here that I would find  myself fascinated in the stories of their dedication to god, something I shared. I would examine the nature of their sufferings and sacrifice. Though I did not know it back then, I see it now in reflection. This dedication to  god, this relationship to a force far bigger than self was something I  felt drawn to understand. Thus my own experiences….the pain of the household juxtaposed with a desperate dedication to god was strengthened in me. Service would later be a maturing out of this juxtaposition.

In my late twenties and early thirties I had the experiences of pure seeing. I was lifted temporarily out of this world. To a world where a soul goes in between lifetimes, where I was shown my own soul’s desire to realize everything I could about external power in humans thru being totally immersed in staggering difficulties. I purely saw how I specifically placed myself into a family where it would be possible to jump into very intense emotions, largely painful ones, I witnessed the  incarnational impulse to go into physicality. I saw how family relationships were an opportunity for me to address the painful feelings of helplessness, desperation’s, neediness,lying, years of broken promises, unfathomable disappointments, embarrassments, and humiliations that the experience of alcoholism can bring upon a group of people and how this would be a large part of my earth schooling.

I saw how my own innate purpose was to be fully engaged in this scenario as a context to this lifetime, like the dark soil  in the ground where my little self , the seed of this lifetime, would begin to grow. All new to my new little self, however to the soul this is the continuation.

I purely saw how in previous lifetimes I had chosen the play of external power, and my exerting this power on everyone around me. And as I have written before, how my intention to understand external power in the human world, along with all the emotions this excites, was the driving force behind my early childhood experiences and the choice for this incarnation. Perfect!

Out of the pure seeing developed a pure understanding of the nature of the purpose of the suffering. I realized I must learn everything about these emotions that I could!

Which I was completely immersed. My only way out was thru. There was no other way to get away….only to go thru it all.

To encounter the life of someone especially a parent who thru their life choices overshadowed with alcoholism…became wasted dreams, wasted love, wasted and unfulfilled living,  so close to my little boy self had a magnificently powerful effect. Learning to apply a meaningfulness to what was happening to me. I knew I did not want this to happen to me either!

This meaningful suffering developed and grew into many new directions, just like branches on a tree sprouting out, growing stronger, branches that became long and full  and reaching to the sunlight. My personal growth began to carry me thru as I learned the significance of how blown up and out of balance the ego really is. ( coming form the perspective of addiction and co dependence) Repetitious embarrassments and humiliations at the chaos of a miserable alcoholic world touching the innocence and vulnerability of a little boy-child. This is powerful life stuff.

And for my soul perfect!

You see I learned the ego of an alcoholic is all about self. It is a self centered experience, where the self is overwhelmed all consumed with their addiction, how to get it, how to get more and more and more, and they do anything including lose themselves to have it. And dramas! Drama ,drama, drama!  Any other considerations are dwarfed by comparison as everyone and everything is drawn into the spiraling insanity of the addict. Taking, taking, taking! The negativity in this life experience became the most powerful force for transformation in my life.

For example I recall such memories as losing the family car… thus no transportation to go to school, spending all the money…. so there is no food, no Christmas presents, no shoes for school, no electricity, my parent being taken to jail right in front of us, his time spent in jail, meant no parent around,  his bad checks and unpaid bills causing bill collectors to pound on the front door yelling as the family was made to hide as my mom turned out all the lights. Drunken stupor for years ,smelly drunken smells of passing out on the floor, on the couch and in the house. And then there is the seemingly endless fighting, crying, arguing late at night ……how was a little child to even sleep thru all this insanity? And those individuals surrounding the addict become pulled into this dominating theme of self centeredness. The amount of self centered energy people in addictions manifest is staggering. It is all consuming in every way and particularly flavored by drama drama drama. The self centeredness of it all becomes JUST TOO MUCH! The immensity too great for me not to notice to question and to learn to heal.

Rather than continue in this same path I moved myself out, in any and every way possible, slowly, piece by piece, until my journey turned to healing.

I committed myself to heal the effects of all this madness. I would do anything….. anything healthy that is………… to learn how to feel better, to free myself from the agony of this experience. I would do therapy, take classes, investigate emotions and feelings till I got clear. I would commit myself to showing up. Everyday as much as I could with every person. I learned to use the mantra of choosing sobriety in life vs. the alcoholic version. I thought this thought many times! My soul was on Spiritual fire with the possibility of it all.

In time the answers arrive, the redefining of everything once known. In the rediscovery of life, of letting go, of braving the unknown the soul takes over.

I would release many, many painful emotions, reliving them as they arose and releasing them back to source. I would empty myself over and over and over, until one day it happened…. I can only describe it as a quote……” the peace that passeth all understanding” suddenly, in one moment dropped into me. My physical body was stilled, I became unmovable.  Is it really the soul? I am not sure if that is what it is, however there is more to us, further inside us that is strong, that is clear, that is present and that is connected to everything larger and smaller. Perhaps it is the soul, perhaps it is only pure being. The name of it is really not that important to me. The depth of  pure stillness was upon me like I had never felt before!

The immense pain of severe self centeredness and addiction has become the perfect counterpoint to this stillness within and service in my life. It is perhaps one of the most powerful places inside me this incarnation. The polarity of such…. taking in life…. with giving to life.

 This has caused within me to reflect  deeply  Having passed thru the hundreds and hundreds of moments of redefining what all this means to me has brought me to a place of  gratitude. I understand the divine purpose of my suffering and the people who played their roles. I get how now how life is all about the experiences we encounter.  I have learned how to recognize the true spirit of giving and receiving.  I strengthened my ideas of authenticity and redirected my energy. I have had a big life experience in emotions and feelings thru the dark side of it all. I have uncovered the misunderstanding, the foul smell of pain and seen what it truly is for me. There is no longer any need to duplicate it, repeat it, or dredge it up.

The joy that has reconnected within me, even as I still go thru my little sufferings, is  the result of the experiences of such tremendous self centeredness and pain this lifetime has brought to me, and my willingness to experience this has shown me the possibility of transcending and  creating new healthy life experience, this is amazing to me. and lead to a completely astounding  and life changing experience.  A day where I heard the VOICE,  it was very distant…. yet within, it was very soft,…. yet all powerful.

It came from the furthest past beyond any sense of time  into the very present now……. and it echoed and vibrated with power and it said : “THE PROMISE!”

‘THE PROMISE..” those words echoed, their meaning, vibrated and resounded  inside me like the inside of a ten ton bell on the top of a church steeple. These words echoed in me, in my soul as if they had sprung from eternity itself. I have never been the same. Ever!

For years and years now I have felt these words and found in them a resonance of spiritual truth. They have echoed in my soul many times again over the years,  as I encountered more of my personal healing and clearing away. Returning yet again as I have witnessed a similar point in life… this in another!  Contained in LIFE there is a promise of ultimate fulfillment, of coming around. The sacred ness of all that we go thru, all the dark places, all the pain, all the suffering has a purposeful direction that does not end in pain, that leads us back to our original state…. that which we came from, in source as JOY. And in this we are more than when we began.

The repositioning of consciousness into healthy places of self. The realizations from the agonies, and the deliverance to joy.  I cannot deny my heart’s desire to love, to give back or to genuinely serve.

There is the self… there is the no self.

There is ceaseless spiritual love…. the love IS… the connection that has sustained it all.

Core of spirit within me reflects this day

shared with aloha

The quality of Pure Seeing ……….core spirituality……………..my personal journey

To look without any sense of contamination, opinion, debasing, bias or idea other than to recognize what is…. is. Pure seeing happens when the pulling away of anything other than what is there to be seen and allowing the raw, unfiltered view of your mind’s perceptions to be what ever it is. Including the mind itself, and the thoughts of the mind.

Pure recognition

I have found thru my experiences that as I have cleared any personal issue that has bothered me I come to a new place OF SEEING around it. I have found that any time I let go of my big opinions, you know the ones, where I react and jump to my own conclusions which come from a place inside me that is biased and uneven, there is pure seeing. And even before that happens, as it often does, I see the unevenness of my opinion, pure seeing…. my jumping into reacting. It is all quite funny and silly and horrible as I watch myself as a spiritual being having the human experience. It is all about the experience of living and all the flavors that arise in the experience.

Almost every religion has something to say or do around the quality of purity. The christian model refers to this place as one without sin and has many beliefs to learn to remove it. In the Muslim religion there are many rituals around purity such as washing to remove the uncleanliness the filth. The Jewish path has many rules around this in nidda, mikvah giving attention to aspects of purity. The Native American way uses smudging with sage to cleanse and clear space of unwanted spirit vibrations or thoughts. Each of these different traditions is a path pointing toward a pureness of consciousness.

Why would this be ?

It is widely understood, yet not as fully realized, that purity in seeing, thinking, believing, and acting connects us in some way to God., to Allah, to YHVH, to Great Spirit. To Source.

There is within the stillness of self, and then the stillness of the stillness around this that I am finding, this element of pure seeing. When I allow myself to feel “the nothing”, again pure seeing arises. A simplicity in recognizing each color, each sound, how the air is moving or not moving that comes out of purity. Including pure seeing into that which is defiled, distorted, twisted, debased. It is, for me, a quiet way of allowing what is around me to have connection with the awareness that is my self.

In pure seeing there is no separation. I get to have the experience of presence in the endlessness of being and nothing as in any form or non form.

When I recognize pure seeing, I feel consciousness as it permeates all of our physical reality. I have a sense of pure seeing that exists just under the surface of the all that is. I have a sense it is far out into the universe into and beyond the stars and very very close to where my feet are touching the earth. This is a fantastic experience.

What is amazing to me is it doesn’t matter what I put my attention … anything comes within the watchful eye of the “pure seeing”.

In pure seeing there are also layers of reality, finer forms of reality where life also exists in endless form. There is color that is so alive… so vibrant ….and so filled with energy, my words can hardly describe. All these colors and all these other life forms exist right here, in a way, overlapping our 3 dimensional matrix of reality grounded in the physical senses. I have watched the off planet beings in their star ships regulating our physical world, caring for the slipping plates in our earth’s crust, studying us, guarding the humans who tend the monstrous cache of weapons our world military’s are hiding so as to avoid THE BIG MISTAKE, guarding and protecting the numerous nuclear plants scattered across the lands. I have seen the great beings that are the trees…extending their presence far beyond the reaches of their limbs expressing tremendous glory and joy. I have watched the fascinating work of tiny light beings in plants reveling in their day. I have watched the faces of families and friends who have passed out of this dimension drop in to share their messages to loved ones, I have witnessed words and messages that actually travel on the winds, I have listened to pains of forests being mutilated and heard their cry’s. Turning to see their bodies being cut. I have watched the angelic presences swirl around those who have just been thru serious life altering surgeries. I have witnessed the decent of a mighty angelic arriving to tend the sobs of woman passing thru her biggest horror of having just lost a loved one.  I have watched in death the leaving of the light as it passed up out of the body into the air up to the ceiling and on out of the room. I have looked into the ripe belly of mom just so close to giving birth and watched the child waiting to come out. I have smelled the sweet fragrance of flowers when holy ones descend into the room. The context of life thru “pure seeing” is widened and far richer than even the imagination. The spectrum of how we are interconnected is obvious and without question. The magnificence of light, color, sound and the depth of darkness far exceed the physicality of human eyes.

Learning pure seeing…. to see with the eyes of the soul is not such a gift to me, as it is the next step in our human experience. As we finish up the loose ends of generations of left brain, critical analytical thinking, our capacity to see using all of our brain becomes integrated. Right hemispheric perceptions do not get blocked from our attention. As happens thru the editing by our analytical left brain dominant thinking. Right brain perceptions contain all those things that are outside the left brain definitions from which we have built our realities. Integrating both the left and right sides of our brains gives us the ability to sort thru these new and interesting dimensions of life.

Pure seeing usually blips thru our day to day and we think this is an AHAA moment. And it is. Yet this is simply the glimmer of a larger picture.

Life is a total AHAA.

Core of spirit in me reflects this day

shared with aloha

to realize our folly in life we arrive to the following conclusion….

live like you never lived before……….staying connected!

The hardened places…………core spirituality …..my personal journey

What moves me is what shows up each day and night of my life. The stuff of being a human. It is my intention to release love to what moves me. Today I get out of bed with a feeling of uncomfortableness. I intentionally find my heart, I go here, and I attend to this in this way. I find that my uncomfortable place responds to this redirection of more heart, more love, more tenderness.

I realize I can accept what moves me no matter the polarity of it… be it positive or negative.

What moves me comes out of someplace within self, as well as around me. Often it is in the context of silence, the nothing. In still moments I have the experience of attention and presence. These qualities seem to inform me. I have had a life of that….. information.

For this moment it is enough. Enough information.

There is another something here I can not name it. Although I can point to it thru the words. It is like presence, yet it is nothing.

In the smallest of observations there is also vastness. There is what appears to be a continuum, and I cannot see the edges.

The opened self.

The self that is me, the self that is another. The old edges are dissolving. Sitting at a desk like a playwright holding an old script, needing to tear away the pages.

Edges are how the mind defines things, defines the self. What is happening is going past the mind, and past the self. It is the “everything” now that makes itself known to me. As edges are dissolving I learn to recognize the humor of my own silly boxes.

Boxes of reality, my attempts to cope with human life. There is a new freedom arising that shows me these boxes where I have put LIFE. Yet life unto itself, overflows far beyond definitions I had put into place. The words on the script begin to slide off the pages and the empty paper is all that is left.

I cannot hold on anymore.

I cannot hold to my previous versions of reality, how I defined what “it” is all about. I find myself feeling able to release and in doing so I let go my grip………..of familiar positions. My sure and firm grasp no longer feels appropriate. The tensions are leaving…… the tensions are leaving.

It is interesting to watch as reality comes apart, reality as we define it. How we box it up and call it a name, put a label on it. Because really it is all so much more and so much less. It makes me laugh. I want to shout out loud…….FOLLY! ( as I chuckle with glee)

Tiny mental boxes which hold my memories, my versions of what has passed thru me. Like finding an old photo album down in the almost forgotten shadow of a cellar, from another time,another place.

There is a knowing that I have of experience. That is all it is. No fancy wrappers, no frilly papers, no fancy bows. Simply experience. I have a picture now… a river of emotion inside me that comes to a rest, a slowing down, there is a still point of it all. The old rages, the lengthy hurts, the hurling of opinion, and the pointing of the finger…….all………..come………………down….

to rest.

Because experience is that it is what it is…. an experience. I find in myself the words……….let it be.

Let it be.

 A hard stone is worn away by single drops of water. One drop at a time.

That the hard eventually yields to the soft is a fact in nature, and the natural outcome of what happens…. is a little known thing understood by many yet realized by few. I once read long ago in a Taoist writing. The awareness of this idea has stuck with me for years and arises for me again and again.

The happening of a spiritual being passing thru a human experience is the dance of encountering the hard places. Hard as in concrete, hard as in difficult. That we eventually take these hard places onto ourselves, that we stand on hard places, that we fall from them and sometimes jump from them is our movement in physicality. The stuff which makes our experience here real. Yet none of it is real. For we are not a hard place. And there are no hard places that last forever.

Ultimately there are no hard places at all. It is all simply a passing thru life.

Core within me is reflecting

shared with aloha

The voice of still presence …………..core spirituality for your discernment

Still presence………….

has nothing to say

the empty space of oneness

contains attention

of the infinite expressions of itself inside each of us as we go about our day. Still presence does not discriminate, nor does it hold special anyone or anything.

It simply is.

In the is-ness of this moment there is 100% acceptance of whatever shows up.

In the still presence all thoughts are just that….. thoughts.

In the still presence all feelings are just that…..feelings.

In the still presence all actions are just that…….. actions.

Whatever is….is.

There is no effort, no shift, no recoiling, no adjusting, no redoing, no action………save attention.

Attention.

In this attention is the presence of everything and nothing.

Nothing = no thing

still presence has no agendas

there is no resistance………..none

pure void……………..

only pure attention to what is

each life form has a still presence, each human has a still presence

still presence is each life form

still presence is each human

still presence is all life without any separations

still presence is one

still presence is the early dawn,before the world wakes up. When all things are simply being.

Still presence is the quiet night stars twinkling over head

still presence is a rock on the hill, being itself

still presence is cloud in the sky, moving….floating by

still presence is the baby sleeping, the cat curled up on her favorite spot….simply breathing, dreaming their dream.

still presence is the rain falling, the brook swirling, the river flowing by.

still presence is the tree standing in your yard, on your street, in the forest

still presence is a child’s drawing hanging on the fridge, a Van Gogh painting hanging on the wall.

Still presence is a blade of grass, and a million more.

a grain of sand, amongst zillions

a wave unfolding on the shore, onto the land’s edges all over the world

Still presence surrounds trains, cars, hotels, lakes, highways, oceans, continents, planets, stars.

Still presence surrounds the argument, the fight, the couple locked into their harsh and painful expressions to one another.

Still presence envelopes empty space

still presence surrounds the world of humanity struggling with conflicts, with wars, with death and killings.

still presence is attention while everything is happening in trillions and trillions of activities all around us.

Still presence attaches itself to no=thing and no one

still presence

“…have some today!”

Core of spirit within me speaks

shared with aloha

Moonstruck – I’m Confused

Confusions and inaction…………….core spirituality for your discernment

How to honor the state of confusion and give it your full respect and attention!

Confusion is the natural response to an overload of new information.

Confusion is the natural response to holding on to and colliding with too many unfinished feelings and thoughts as new data comes into awareness.

Confusion is opposing views that come to the forefront that need to be sorted out. Confusion will show up to alert you that something or someone has shifted in your reality while you were looking another way.   Confusion arises when our beliefs about life are out of sync, out dated, or incorrect for us, and true reality smacks us in the face. ( I call this a reality wake up call !.)

Confusion demands that we pay attention! And drives us sometimes kicking and screaming thru the descents into our most denied, unloved emotional states. Without the input of confusion we may avoid much of what life is revealing to us.

I find confusion potent. I am drawn to it, like a detective on a dark side street hunting down the clues to a “who dun it” novel.

Confusion is the unraveling of life as we are led into our own unique mysteries, showing us the clues in our direction, like bread crumbs leading us thru the forest of our own little Hansel and Gretel faerie tale.

Confusion is a sign that some new information has entered the equation requiring our attention.

Confusion is the reality of billions upon billions of human beings everyday of our lives.

I propose that we give it some respect. That we elevate confusion to the level of teacher in our lives.

Some of my most valuable life learning has arisen from a confusion I have studied, dismantled, and sorted out.

Some of the closest feelings I have shared with another person came to pass by working out our confusions with one another.

Some of the most genuine moments in time I have shared with another person were preceded by our confusion. And our determination to sort it out.

Some of the most healing grace I have ever felt or witnessed arose from the deep work of taking apart confusion.

Some of the most satisfying answers I have ever found were preceded by confusion.

When confusion arrived I was stopped in my tracks, slowed down, and set back only to realize… had I gone forward in the way I was planning, I would never have achieved my goal. Confusion is life’s way of getting us back on track with the original plan, the ultimate goals, the truths of our lives. In hindsight I can see the value of confusion as it took over my life and redirected my thinking mind, and prevented me from unfavorable outcomes. I find this amazing!

Confusion has been an amazing teacher in my life, showing up in the most unexpected and unintended ways.

So how is it that so many individuals get lost when confusions “hit the fan”?

So how is it that people simply crumble under the weight of their confusions?

So how is it that we ramble on, press forward, and make decisions having not payed attention to our sense of confusion?

How is it that we deny, ignore, and invalidate our basic day to day confusion around issues that continually show up?

How is that we override the confusion and force our way thru? Generating tremendous pain and suffering to ourselves and one another?

How convenient is it that we insert empty rote habits and ideas, religious beliefs, and stagnant notions of reality, over our deeper sense of inward confusion?

How is that we cower away from the confusion we feel with one another in our most important relationships?

I recall as a parent my 3 daughters, upon awakening would fill the air with a plethora of questions from sun up to sun down. Their innate curiosity striving to engage with life. Where does this wondrous nature go? Is it swallowed up in the confusions….. unattended?

Why is it so many people do not have their answers? Are walking around and around in circles? Repeating scenarios, reliving their relationship dramas dramas dramas, and not finding the joy?

Why is there such an emphasis on money? An emphasis on materiality… the new car, the new clothes, the brand name, the make up, all the outward appearances? Is this the replacement, the cover up for a more serious issue of a lack of answers to life? Is this how we avoid the confusion? Think about this!

Chronic prescription drug use, over eating, getting high all the time, habitual drinking, busyness, are all these human activities simply about pain or is there a lot of confusion underneath the surface of our lives just waiting to be addressed?

If you have delegated confusion to the back room, the last moment, across the park, somebody else, as unnecessary, or unimportant ….boy are you gonna get it! You are guaranteeing some pretty dark moments in your future days. Hold on to your hats….. this is not going to be pretty.

The possibility that you will collide in some way with some idea, belief, emotion, or person, group, or circumstance in a very uncomfortable manner is heading your way. The odds are in your favor, should you decide that confusion is not that important to you.

WAKE UP

Yes that is all it is….. your wake up call, like a buzzing alarm clock blaring in your ears in the comfort of your self imposed bubble of comfortable pillows as you try to sleep just a few more minutes before you must arise . Confusion is our wake up call, our alarm, our sign, our signal, our life speaking to us.

So stop denying it, stop avoiding it, stop minimizing your own confusions. Allow your self to take action.

As spiritual beings having a human experience one valuable component of your lives are your “wake up” calls. These arrive just in time to inform you of something new arising for you to consider, or something you have missed along your journey. Learning how to integrate confusion into your daily life without adding additional drama drama drama is to pay attention and take action. Your confusions will not build up so largely, so immensely and thus you create a capability.

That you have to stop your normal ideas of who you are, what you are doing, is all part of the curriculum of your life. This is all normal and I suggest you accept confusion in your life as just that….normal. And it will pass. That you do not take action with your confusion will always compress your daily life with the layering of unfinished scenarios of every kind. Complicating your attention and diluting your essential nature here on the earth plane. The art of being human requires a participation in life and how life informs you on a daily basis.

“The successful art of being human is not that you do not have confusion, it is that you embrace it.”

“Please learn this!”

“Upon awakening each day focus on the love “great spirit’” has for you and your sojourn thru human existence. Focus on the fact that any confusions that arise are your gifts, leading you to and thru your very own wake up calls. Love that you are here and that you will be shown how and what to do as you open yourself to the new information that arises in your finding the answers. One step at a time, one day at a time.”

“Were you to cultivate this one simple awareness of your life, you will be able to face and come thru anything that arises. You will finish your physicality with a sense of inner well being and leave this life without any regrets!”

“It is a personal choice for you to wake up. In case you did not realize how you are to do this look inside your own inner confusions to map your way. Life is presenting you the clues you need. Embrace yourself, embrace your confusion, and love whatever shows up for you this day.”

my core of spirit within speaks to me now…..

shared with aloha

Who I was Born To Be

celebrating the life of being who we are here to be……

Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud

Loving whatever is arising………even exclusion……

Emotional abuses, Seeing behind the curtain of our denial ( part 2) ………. core spirituality for your discernment

We humans avoid pain everyday and there is wisdom in this and there is absurdity and miscalculation. Discernment is needed at all costs. How we invest ourselves in our private internal mind talks, and our most private internal feelings is very important if we want to stop the cycles of life disharmony, and hardships we find ourselves. We can look deeper, increase our self honesty, and learn to stop hiding our sad, broken, states of emotional suffering by learning to become self aware and taking whole new steps forward. Our planetary consciousness of emotional awareness has developed in massive staggering new ways in the last 50 years.

With one another and this world. We are really each one of us in the driver seat of our lives whether we own this or we do not. There are many genuine victims in life, and there are many toxic, unhealthy victims. We have the need to address this by having an open mind and looking over the following material.

Emotional abuse has become a common element in the world medias, and in the public domain on a vast rampant scale. Television is filled with such exchanges as if this is a normal way to address another individual or group. Political people, religious leaders, talking heads on the news, the list goes on and on. How much of this are you absorbing without a question?

I would like to address all the victims here. WE can transform our pain.

I would like to address all perpetrators, WE too, can heal our pain.

Whether you participate in unhealthy self dialogues on either side of this subject or both sides of it……. this is for you. Learn to become self informed and learn to redefine your perceptions of life.

The information in this next short article is so good I want to share it here, from the Counseling Center at University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign.

What is Emotional Abuse?

Abuse is any behavior that is designed to control and subjugate another human being through the use of fear, humiliation, and verbal or physical assaults. Emotional abuse is any kind of abuse that is emotional rather than physical in nature. It can include anything from verbal abuse and constant criticism to more subtle tactics, such as intimidation, manipulation, and refusal to ever be pleased.

Emotional abuse is like brain washing in that it systematically wears away at the victim’s self-confidence, sense of self-worth, trust in their own perceptions, and self-concept. Whether it is done by constant berating and belittling, by intimidation, or under the guise of “guidance,” “teaching,” or “advice,” the results are similar. Eventually, the recipient of the abuse loses all sense of self and remnants of personal value. Emotional abuse cuts to the very core of a person, creating scars that may be far deeper and more lasting than physical ones (Engel, 1992, p. 10).

Types of Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse can take many forms. Three general patterns of abusive behavior include aggressing, denying, and minimizing.

Aggressing

• Aggressive forms of abuse include name-calling, accusing, blaming, threatening, and ordering. Aggressing behaviors are generally direct and obvious. The one-up position the abuser assumes by attempting to judge or invalidate the recipient undermines the equality and autonomy that are essential to healthy adult relationships. This parent-to-child pattern of communication (which is common to all forms of verbal abuse) is most obvious when the abuser takes an aggressive stance.

• Aggressive abuse can also take a more indirect form and may even be disguised as “helping.” Criticizing, advising, offering solutions, analyzing, probing, and questioning another person may be a sincere attempt to help. In some instances, however, these behaviors may be an attempt to belittle, control, or demean rather than help. The underlying judgmental “I know best” tone the abuser takes in these situations is inappropriate and creates unequal footing in peer relationships.

Denying

• Invalidating seeks to distort or undermine the recipient’s perceptions of their world. Invalidating occurs when the abuser refuses or fails to acknowledge reality. For example, if the recipient confronts the abuser about an incident of name calling, the abuser may insist, “I never said that,” “I don’t know what you’re talking about, “ etc.

• Withholding is another form of denying. Withholding includes refusing to listen, refusing to communicate, and emotionally withdrawing as punishment. This is sometimes called the “silent treatment.”

• Countering occurs when the abuser views the recipient as an extension of themselves and denies any viewpoints or feelings which differ from their own.

Minimizing

• Minimizing is a less extreme form of denial. When minimizing, the abuser may not deny that a particular event occurred, but they question the recipient’s emotional experience or reaction to an event. Statements such as “You’re too sensitive,” “You’re exaggerating,” or “You’re blowing this out of proportion” all suggest that the recipient’s emotions and perceptions are faulty and not to be trusted.

• Trivializing, which occurs when the abuser suggests that what you have done or communicated is inconsequential or unimportant, is a more subtle form of minimizing.

• Denying and minimizing can be particularly damaging. In addition to lowering self-esteem and creating conflict, the invalidation of reality, feelings, and experiences can eventually lead you to question and mistrust your own perceptions and emotional experience.

Understanding Abusive Relationships

No one intends to be in an abusive relationship, but individuals who were verbally abused by a parent or other significant person often find themselves in similar situations as an adult. If a parent tended to define your experiences and emotions, and judge your behaviors, you may not have learned how to set your own standards, develop your own viewpoints, and validate your own feelings and perceptions. Consequently, the controlling and defining stance taken by an emotional abuser may feel familiar or even comfortable to you, although it is destructive.

Recipients of abuse often struggle with feelings of powerlessness, hurt, fear, and anger. Ironically, abusers tend to struggle with these same feelings. Abusers are also likely to have been raised in emotionally abusive environments and they learn to be abusive as a way to cope with their own feelings of powerlessness, hurt, fear and anger. Consequently, abusers may be attracted to people who see themselves as helpless or who have not learned to value their own feelings, perceptions, or viewpoints. This allows the abuser to feel more secure and in control, and avoid dealing with their own feelings and self-perceptions.

Understanding the pattern of your relationships, especially those with family members and other significant people, is a first step toward change. A lack of clarity about who you are in relationship to significant others may manifest itself in different ways. For example, you may act as an “abuser” in some instances and as a “recipient” in others. You may find that you tend to be abused in your romantic relationships, allowing your partners to define and control you. In friendships, however, you may play the role of abuser by withholding, manipulating, trying to “help” others, etc. Knowing yourself and understanding your past can prevent abuse from being recreated in your life.

Are You Abusive to Yourself?

Often we allow people into our lives who treat us as we expect to be treated. If we feel contempt for ourselves or think very little of ourselves, we may pick partners or significant others who reflect this image back to us. If we are willing to tolerate negative treatment from others, or treat others in negative ways, it is possible that we also treat ourselves similarly. If you are an abuser or a recipient, you may want to consider how you treat yourself. What sorts of things do you say to yourself? Do thoughts such as “I’m stupid” or “I never do anything right” dominate your thinking? Learning to love and care for ourselves increases self-esteem and makes it more likely that we will have healthy, intimate relationships.

Basic Rights in a Relationship

If you have been involved in emotionally abusive relationships, you may not have a clear idea of what a healthy relationship is like. Evans (1992) suggests the following as basic rights in a relationship for you and your partner:

• The right to good will from the other.

• The right to emotional support.

• The right to be heard by the other and to be responded to with courtesy.

• The right to have your own view, even if your partner has a different view.

• The right to have your feelings and experience acknowledged as real.

• The right to receive a sincere apology for any jokes you may find offensive.

• The right to clear and informative answers to questions that concern what is legitimately your business.

• The right to live free from accusation and blame.

• The right to live free from criticism and judgment.

• The right to have your work and your interests spoken of with respect.

• The right to encouragement.

• The right to live free from emotional and physical threat.

• The right to live free from angry outbursts and rage.

• The right to be called by no name that devalues you.

• The right to be respectfully asked rather than ordered.

What Can You Do?

If you recognize yourself or your relationships in this brochure, you may wish to:

• Educate yourself about emotionally abusive relationships. Two excellent resources include:
  Engle, Beverly, M.F.C.C. The Emotionally Abused Woman: Overcoming Destructive Patterns and Reclaiming Yourself. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1992.
  Evans, Patricia. The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond. Holbrook, Massachusetts: Bob Adams, Inc., 1992.

• Consider seeing a mental health professional. A counselor can help you understand the impact of an emotionally abusive relationship. A counselor can also help you learn healthier ways of relating to others and caring for your own needs.

What More Can You Do?

Looking at emotional abuse from core of spirit we can look to how we get stuck in polarity when we find ourselves inside any of these toxic behaviors. ( see previous writing on polarity) . Polarized and highly charged human exchanges contain the following elements.

In polarity the roles of the victim and persecutor are together. Locked in an exchange.

Where there is a victim there is a persecutor. Where there is a persecutor there is a victim.

One needs the other to fulfill their agenda of abusive relating.

Each role is an extreme of one set of circumstances or feelings or thoughts that the two share. They are simply on the extremes of the same issue. This is polarity.

In my own experiences of healing this dynamic I have found that it is common to find one’s self changing roles here. After a series of exchanges of being the victim, we flip over to the persecutor. After a series of exchanges of being the persecutor we flip over to the victim. And so the dance of toxic relating goes……when we develop a conscious awareness of how we are playing these roles we are in a situation in which we can start to dismantle and resolve our own participation. To realize the components of toxic relating in our relationships is fully served thru this polarity. Our owning our part shifts the dynamic into a new and workable place.

We cannot change another person, however we, ourselves can change.

This is where we own our power in any situation. (that we are powerless IS the greatest lie perpetrated on earth.) we have the option to stop our part in any unhealthy style of human relating at any time, at the drop of a hat, in any situation, anywhere. We do not need permission from anyone to do this…..except ourselves.

Upon becoming aware of my part in an unhealthy situation I have changed course in the middle of a sentence, and I know how this dramatically shifts the polarity of any situation. Instantly!

Whomever you are locked in with in this set up will have a new polarity to deal with whenever you step out. And if that other person is not thru with their side of the equation, they will simply find another person, or persons, or group to engage their behavior. Stepping out of your polarities will support you in learning how you are actually feeding into and creating these scenarios and how you can stop recreating them. I find this tremendously empowering, especially after the all the disharmony and pain of it all.

Moving out of toxic relating requires that we own our parts in life. Owning how we unconsciously participate and then learn to become aware. This humbles our ego and puts the egoistic self in appropriate relationship inside of us. Repositioning our ego levels our unfair power playing stances and supports our spiritual self to take front seat. Until we come upon the next scenario of toxic relating. We do this process over and over as we shift the power of life over internally from the loud and demanding voice our little egos to our wise and compassionate authentic spiritual self. Welcome to the classroom of life here on earth. Like it or not this is how it works. Another set of circumstances that result form being locked into polarity is the miscalculation of needing your adversary to join you in order for you to succeed in healing a particular dynamic. This is totally FALSE.

Very often in life we leave painful situations behind and go forward with our lives thinking we have finished up because we have separated from the individual or group we were locked in with. We carry our unresolved hurts inside our bodies, and will find ourselves in completely different places with different people and the toxicity starts all over again! You know when this happens you are still not finished! Once I moved completely across the world to another continent, another country with another language and to my astonishment, my ex-adversary showed up in a completely different person, identical feeling, identical issue. I was amazed and realized from this I was carrying the unfinished emotional business in myself.

We do not need the other person present to heal ourselves. We do not need their consent, agreement, or participation. I found myself having to let go of my attachments to people and situations at this point. There are times when the person with whom you have had bad relating has died, passed on. They may have moved away. This DOES NOT MATTER. We can still take on the part of our own equation and heal ourselves anyway. I know this because I have done this many many times. Let go the attachments to other people’s drama drama drama! And go for it! Go for your own resolutions!

“Undoing the part of any toxic relating we have inherited, been heavily invested in, or unconsciously involved ourselves is primary in learning to identify one’s core spiritual self.”

“It is thru healing our toxic relating that we deepen our self knowledge, gain tremendous inner strength, courage, fortitude. Healing our humanity one self at a time, bringing the soulful meaning and value to the abuse, and the suffering. This shows us the larger context of our human emotions and the possibilities of growing into a neutrality. this neutrality that arises from finally resolving  the ping ponging of duality and  links us with the larger context of spirituality.”

“The human experience drives us towards increasing our knowledge of self thru these uncomfortable situations. These are perhaps our greatest opportunities to have understanding.”

“These are perhaps your greatest opportunities of real riches, inner riches. These inner riches ARE something you can take with you as you leave physicality, unlike the riches of materiality.”

“When you find you are still ashamed, feeling bad, or suffering from previous negative toxic relating you are not finished. You need to go further to claim all the self knowledge from these hardships. You become transformed thru them. You free your life and become much more capable spiritual beings having a human experience. The depth and resource contained within the spiritual self far out surpasses the limiting human self and  your identification becomes anchored in loving understanding spiritual based reality that you carry with you wherever you go.”

 

core within me reveals this day

I believe that the phrase in the prayer from the ….OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN HEAVEN, HALLOWED BE THY NAME, THY KINDDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE, ON EARTTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN…. is referring to this process in us and thru us.” Bringing these soulful qualities into our lives thru addressing what is behind the curtain of our denial and learning to let go  of all our self created limitation and pain.

shared with aloha

Denial……………….core spirituality for your discernment

I found the following article on the lifehacker site written by mental health clinician Roger S. Gil, M.A.M.F.T. This is so good I am sharing his writing here today.

How denial effects you and what to do about it.

 

Denial may be the biggest way we lie to ourselves. While it can help, we often do more harm than good when we refuse to accept the truth and enable maladaptive behaviors and relationships. Here’s how denial works, how it affects your choices, and what you can do to fix the problem.

What Is Denial?

Denial is a psychological defense mechanism that helps a person avoid a potentially distressing truth. It can also be looked at as a form of “avoidance”, which is another psychological term that indicates a person is doing all they can to not deal with a given situation. However you choose to frame it, recognizing its presence in your behavior can do wonders for your ability to know when to look at a situation differently from the way that comes naturally to you.

Denial Can Be Healthy

Everyone engages in denial at one point or another. It’s a normal way of protecting our egos that can get us through some pretty tough situations. Without it, we would probably blindly accept the “noise” our bodies make when we’re tired and don’t want to finish a workout instead of ignoring the fact that fatigue is eating away at our stamina.

Denial Can Be Harmful

When denying reality enables us to continue engaging in an unhealthy behavior (e.g. addiction, impulsive risk-taking, etc.) or when it facilitates the continuation of a harmful situation (e.g. abusive relationship, a job that exploits you, etc.) then it’s pretty safe to say that it is harmful. Unfortunately, most people won’t recognize the harmful effects of denial until they are knee-deep in a bad situation. If the same bad outcomes keep happening to us and we can’t seem to figure out why, there’s a good chance that we are denying reality in some way.

How to Recognize and Address Denial

Pay Attention to Recurring Negative Themes

Recurring negative themes (e.g. a series of harmful relationships, negative side effects related to an addictive behavior, etc.) are good red flags for denial. Chances are that we are either creating an environment that is conducive to the negative outcome we don’t want or fooling ourselves into thinking that we have control over a situation that we really are helpless to affect. If you see a recurring theme, know that you’re probably denying a truth.

Don’t Blame Groups of People

If you find yourself saying things like “all [insert adjective here] people are no good,” then you’re probably denying your role in a situation. It’s highly unlikely that everyone else in the world is colluding against you so you’re probably doing something to contribute to the negative outcome you’re whining about. Take note whenever you use superlatives (e.g. ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘every’, ‘nobody’, etc.) to describe what you think is the cause of your dilemma because it’s probably those occasions that you need to take inventory of YOUR behaviors… after all, the one common thread in all of your dilemmas is YOU.

Consult Different Thinkers

Keep someone who thinks very differently from you available. People are likely to surround themselves with like-minded people so if you’re denying something, your like-minded friends may just reinforce your denial because they may see things the same way you do. Having someone who challenges your opinions and assumptions can do wonders for learning what questions you have to ask yourself about a given situation because they are probably going to question why you feel the way you do. In other words, if you’re a liberal-leaning person then it may be a good idea to keep your conservative uncle on speed dial. Remember that denial is normal and we all engage in it. If we keep finding ourselves in the same negative situation and clueless as to why, then we are probably in denial about something. Look for the red flags and question your assumptions and hopefully you’ll break a negative cycle. Roger S. Gil, M.A.M.F.T., is a a mental health clinician that specializes in marriage and family therapy. You can follow Roger on Twitter

*********************************************************++++++++++++++++++++++*************************************************************************

Looking at denial from the stand of core of spirituality immediately we can begin to recognize the value of developing a strong and vigilant awareness of this trait. Both in our selves, and in the world around us. Tapping us into themes where we are having difficulty showing up, being present and sustaining our integrity.

Opening the doors of denial to process and understand the components of our denials will serve the spirit inside and all around us by triggering our lack of understanding and thus increasing self knowledge.

In my work with denial I have found that uncovering the emotional undertones hiding in denial we actually can empower our selves to embrace our lack of integrity, thus we find ourselves cleaning out “the shadow”, or the subconscious mind ( see previous posts).

Some of the most profound realizations one can have will result from examining our denials. Thus this is a hefty tool to heal old wounds, and improve the world at large. A very important skill to muster on the path of realizing one’s guidance, and right relationship in the human family. This is how we actually stop the cycles of hurt and pain all around us that have lingered for years…. for generations!

I have found some of the most basic dark insidious human behaviors are masked in denials.

Culturally, socially, religiously, and in corporate models, and political systems, denials are perpetrated as if they are truth all over the world. We can see the blindness of denial as it hurts individuals and groups of people, hurts animals, and our planet. The blindness of denial splits families apart, blocks much happiness, prevents human rights, punishes unjustly, rejects and abuses… prolongs suffering in all species, and undermines the integrity of the systems in place thru out nature. Denial casts a long dark shadow upon our world like a looming black cloud over a bright green meadow. Blocking the warmth of the sunlight and prolonging the cold night of darkness.

When we are blocked by our own denials we do not see clearly, nor do we evaluate our circumstances, our judgments and decisions become shrouded in limitations and misunderstandings. This generates more hurt and pain to all our brothers and sisters, and life as we know it.

Denial is perhaps one of the greatest, most significant, most pervasive, most injurious of collective human traits expressing thru out our planet at this time.

In case you have not found in yourself any denial as of late it is time…. to …..get………..with ………….

the curriculum of the times. It is our current illumination and the effects of generations of denial are breaking wide open on a mass level.

My sense is that the darkness of this denial and all the disharmony of it is in our faces now because the cycle of our lives, the times we live, are such that we have the opportunity to address this TOGETHER ! The power of a combined awareness of billions of people realizing what needs to be done now is staggering. And it is amazing. And it is the divine plan of our lives!

Yes it is messy, it is very uncomfortable, and it is difficult. However the other options available to us now…… remaining in our denials SUCK! It behooves us to take action in our individual lives and get on with the work of addressing our denials. My experience shows me that even if we do not act, the polarity of our thoughts and actions in denial bring upon great sufferings and hardships. We are on the edges of many such polarities ( see my previous writing on polarity) and the curtain of denial is showing us where we must go.

Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, finally, after her long journey towards her goal and right before she is about to go  home, she must pull back the curtain and SEE who and what is really pulling on the strings in life. This is our great wake up call. We all need to pull back the curtains of denial hiding the forces of what controls us in our lives. And only when we awaken to what it is we are all really doing here, will we be able to effectively address the hurt, pain, and hardships of our lives together. Preventing us from ending this journey and looking back  on one’s life without regret and wasting time.

“You can do this by looking at how you invest yourself…. your money, your thoughts, your distractions, your time, your precious life energy.

Every day you have the opportunity to address some aspect of denial in your life. Your commitment to your denial will begin the transformation of your life, your planet, your relationships, your work, all the unfinished business of living. You each have the opportunity to fulfill life in greater ways. To access greater degrees of your inner guidance on this planet it is primary that you address denial in your lifetime.

This is a noble act to honestly embrace all that you can, that which is hidden inside and behind your own curtains of denial. There really is no place like home. Make that place the most magnificent one imaginable. You can do it.”

core of spirit within me speaks this day

shard with aloha

Guidance ……… core spirituality for your discernment

 

Lets face it everyone needs help here on earth. Learning to be guided by life can save a lot of time, energy and repetition. The game plan of life almost requires a sharpening of our senses and internal self knowledge in order to bypass the pitfalls. Even so, once we are in a conundrum we can utilize guidance to maneuver our way thru any situation.

 

The first and most valuable notion I have to support the idea of learning about guidance is to resolve for one’s self that we are never powerless. It is the succumbing to thoughts and feelings of powerlessness that overrides our guidance and prevents us from being informed in fresh new ways. I maintain the biggest lie perpetrated on the earth is that we are powerless and thus I am vigilant towards any time I find myself feeling this. I don’t block that feeling, I do acknowledge it, and then I simply affirm to myself that powerlessness is a lie, and I redirect my attention.

 

Take the time to examine any beliefs, feelings, or thoughts whenever there is a block around a situation that feels powerless and take this apart and dismantle it. The time spent doing this facilitates the opening to inner peace, and genuine new possibility for self. Taking the “edge” off a difficult situation.

 

The second notion I hold is one of the thinking mind. Noticing the difference between our thinking mind thoughts and our genuine inner voice. Learning to do this requires that we take control over our thoughts in a way that learns to start and stop the thinking analytical mind. To be very familiar with how and when this is operating inside us and to learn to regulate this activity. There are many paths to taming the thinking mind and it is wise to learn some tools so as to be able to invest your attention into the specific area of mind you desire. To master one’s thoughts processes is absolutely a primary condition of learning to discern genuine inner guidance.

 

Cleaning up our subconscious ……opens up space inside our psyche to engage and reflect inwardly. People that have loaded subconscious feelings, thoughts have the most difficult time with guidance. Past history, emotional dead ends, unresolved problems, all contribute to the overloading of the conscious mind. Perpetrating states of endless polarity in life. Thus healthy forms of therapy, particularly feelings therapy will facilitate emptying out our past history around the difficult life experiences we have already walked thru. Learning to empty out the subconscious is also primary in creating an inner power of guidance.

 

There are also those instances where we do resolve issues, we express out our personal histories, we take care of our emotional dead ends and this catapults us into larger arenas of life experiences where we can become overloaded by the new information we are having. Naturally confusion arises as we learn to sort thru the new materials. High information zones in life also need grounding, thus developing strategies to anchor ourselves during high information zones is primary to receiving our inner guidance. (Working out, physical exercise, time in nature etc.)

 

Substance abuse contributes to interfering with the human brain and the consciousness flowing thru this organ inside our heads, thus any mind altering substances, pain medications, chronic prescription drugs, chronic alcohol use that blocks pain will contribute to a loaded subconscious. A medicated brain simply cannot address reality in the same way a non medicated brain can feel, sense, think, analyze etc.. going thru detox, and finding alternative sources to manage pain will allow the natural feelings and life skills to return. It is a sobering experience, difficult, yet do-able and also necessary to receive inner guidance.

 

I am often approached by individuals seeking guidance. Thus I have cultivated a familiarity with the subject. The most frequent state I encounter when someone asks me for guidance is confusion, overload, and lots and lots of thinking. All the things that block natural inner intuitive guidance.

 

The first steps to receiving guidance are the preparing the self for receiving. Commitment to inner work, understanding our feelings and emotions, processing life and learning about personal boundaries in these areas all make a personality stronger and more capable. Without doing your inner work it is a difficult uphill battle. I find little or no short cuts work here. Flashes of guidance still will break thru our human messiness, and chaos, however these are too few and far between. Living in a state of daily perpetual guidance is a whole new ball game and the next step in the human evolution.

 

Basically I call it “cleaning up our act”! This is the most effective, most powerful form of how to receive guidance I know. Which leads me to….

 

Feeling empty!

 

Feeling empty is the next step I have learned to integrate into myself in a whole new way. The empty moments, the pauses in conversations, the no-think spaces inside our heads are the valuable internal places where the guidance pops in.

 

Culturally we are invested in filling every single empty feeling ,with every conceivable distraction known to mankind, …..into that emptiness. Our lives are filled with tremendous loads of vast new data anyway, and learning to pay attention to the empty feeling gets overridden continuously. Distractions are designed specifically to fill the empty voids by our capitalistic society and not because these are good for us, it is to make a profit for someone else. I have learned to cut down on distraction and cultivate the empty places!

 

Introversion in our society has almost become a bad word. To one who is seeking to grow it is a necessary part of everyday. I resolve to honor that process by not filling it up with hiding, or distraction. To honestly engage in the silence, the emptiness with an open mind. To feel it. To get comfortable with it. And then to cultivate it. When we are ready to extrovert ourselves we naturally feel this and can take actions to get out into the world, be with people and places that interest us and truly fulfill our curiosity about life.

 

My empty spaces are filled with nothingness.

The pauses in our conversation are felt.

The no-think is no longer scarey.

I am no longer ravaged by my own mind or experience.

I protect the silence.

I give myself permission to do nothing and simply BE.

I am in an ongoing recovery of my spiritual self. Claiming my spirit, owning my spirit, feeling spirit in me and around me.

 

In future essays I will explore the different forms of guidance we have and how to engage these beautiful qualities of life. So stay tuned.

 

“Guidance is the natural outpouring of Source around you and in you thru clues, confirmations, affirmations, setbacks, information, and repetitions and surprises. Source engaging you in multiple ways. Success and failure in life both facilitate guidance. To engage your guidance means redefining your reality in constant ways. Living with spiritual guidance as it arises from within yourself develops spiritual intimacy with spiritual direction. Life circumstance is in flux, guidance is a constant. Learning this is true can have tremendous bearing on how all your outcomes in life develop.”

 

core of spirit within me reveals this day

 

shared with aloha

Polarity, uncovering the matrix of our lives……… core spirituality for your discernment

Universal laws are the unseen, yet very substance of life thru which the manifest and un-manifest come into expression thru life. The organization of the creation, of the creator.  In my experience with the Australian indigenous elders shamans I learned their culture holds that the world is dreamed by creator and then brought into manifest thru us. The framework to do this, the matrix is universal law.

Once a spiritual being takes on physicality the memory of this may be diminished or completely blocked and the discovery of how life works begins again inside the incarnate journey. This is part of the purposeful work of life and the navigation thru this matrix is our task. Welcome to planet earth!

Our success in this endeavor is reflected in our capacity to uncover, understand, and utilize the spiritual based laws of life. Our success is also our failure to uncover, understand, and utilize the spiritual laws of life….. each aspect works. Thus the combinations of experience we live…. of both positive and negative contribute to the soul’s human experiences of their sojourn thru the earth plane.

This soul knowledge is collected and contributes to Source. As I have seen myself in my visits to the Akashic Records. When ever an incarnation is completed and the individual is ready a review occurs… to go over what experiences were had, how the individual processed these experiences, the effects of actions on others and in the world are felt again and choices are made as to the next steps the soul would like to take. The akashic record of one’s life is made available to examine and weigh along side the specific universal principles the soul is seeking to uncover and understand in human form. One such law of life here is polarity which effects everything!

In an article written by Marie Barrett entitled: Holistic Wealth : A Guide to Creative and Joyful Livingshe states the following valuable understanding of polarity;

…. let’s define five characteristics of a polarity.

• A polarity is a singular experience stretching in two opposing directions, toward positive and negative poles.

• Each of these polar elements contains the essence and characteristics of its opposite pole. It is holographic.

• The spectrum of possibilities within that polarity includes all the variations of vibratory resonance between the two extremes.

• The positive extreme cannot exist without the negative extreme within the spectrum of the same polarity, or the polarity would collapse.

• The point of balance between each extreme of the polarity is neutral space.

Now BREATHE………………………

The time to deepen and to translate this into one’s earthly emotional and physical reality is truly worth every minute. I have found learning about opposites is fun and reveals the many polarities that do exist here on earth. They are a common element to every person, something we all share with one another that enriches the day to day occurrences of our relationships.

That relationship is filled with the nature of  polarity is very important to embrace and understand. Have you ever found yourself completely polarized with someone? With yourself?

That reality here is filled with the nature of polarity is also very important to embrace and understand. How have you felt about someone in the polar opposite of your own life?

That Grace exists here and transcends the nature of polarity here is also worth noting. Have  you witnessed the miraculous, complete remission of disease, of hardship ?

Not until an incarnate can live fully with the comprehension of polarity will there come to pass the co-creation of new and uplifting experiences. Up to this point usually there is a kind of “ping ponging” back and forth along the specific life experience until the overall picture becomes apparent to the individual. There is a lot of action – reaction. A lot of ups and downs. Periods of extremes in confusions,misunderstandings, miss-identifications, darkness. Periods of extremes in clarity, understandings, right identifications, and light. This is the law of polarity in our lives! I like to say again welcome to planet earth!

By developing our capacity to observe polarity around us we can begin to understand direction. Direction from something and outwards away. Thus learning how situations unfold lose their mystery and we can navigate our way avoiding certain polarities. As the Buddha refers to walk the middle ground. Neutrality!

Our emotional and relationship issues are much easier to unravel, the conundrums come apart as we apply knowledge of polarity. And choose actions that balance rather than throw ourselves further into uncomfortable extremes. Balance!

Watch around you now at the world. Begin to observe human activity and notice where individuals and groups are completely unaware of the effects of polarity. Watch the actions, words, deeds and notice how we propel our own selves thru our unconscious choices into polarities. I find this fascinating!

Prisoners are particularly interesting as are youth. The lack of experience guarantees a polarity experience of an extreme. Whatever the case we are all subject to this one law of life. Everyone of us.

Until we learn to neutralize our  extreme feelings of experience thru the understandings of polarities and regain our equilibrium. In fact I observe that humanity is becoming masterful in this one law of life. We are in the midst of gigantic learning about how we create our lives as we find the middle way through our extremes.

Here is a list of opposites to begin to see where you are headed in the case you find yourself in a polarity of life.

absence presence accept refuse accurate inaccurate advantage disadvantage alive dead always never ancient modern answer question, query approval disapproval approached receded, departed abundant scarce admit deny advance retreat, retire artificial natural arrival departure ascend descend attack defense attractive repulsive attention inattention asleep awake ally enemy agree disagree bad good backward forward, onward bend straighten beautiful ugly beginning ending below above bent straight big small, little blunt sharp better worse best worst blame praise bless curse bitter sweet borrow lend bravery cowardice build destroy, demolish bold timid, meek bright dull broad narrow clear vague, cloudy careful rush, careless calm troubled capable incapable captivity freedom, liberty cellar attic cheap dear, expensive close distant clever stupid cold hot combine separate clockwise anti-clockwise correct incorrect conceal reveal come go common rare comfort discomfort courage cowardice cruel kind courteous discourteous, rude cunning simple dainty clumsy danger safety dark light deep shallow decrease increase definite indefinite demand supply despair hope disappear appear disease health discourage encourage dismal cheerful doctor patient dry wet dull clear, bright dusk dawn early late easy difficult ebb flow East West economise waste encourage discourage entrance exit employer employee empty full excited calm end beginning expand contract expensive inexpensive, cheap export import exterior interior external internal fail succeed false true feeble sturdy, strong, powerful foolish wise fast slow few many famous unknown forelegs hind legs fat thin find lose first last freedom captivity fold unfold frequent seldom forget remember found lost fresh stale friend enemy fortunate unfortunate frank secretive full empty generous mean gentle rough gather distribute glad sorry gloomy cheerful giant dwarf, pygmy granted refused great minute, small, little guardian ward guest host guilty innocent happy sad, miserable hard soft harmful harmless hasten dawdle hate love healthy unhealthy, ill, diseased here there heavy light height depth hero coward hill valley horizontal vertical hinder aid, help honest dishonest humble proud hunger thirst imitation genuine immense tiny, minute imprison free include exclude increase decrease inhabited uninhabited inferior superior inside outside intelligent unintelligent, stupid inhale exhale interior exterior, outside interesting uninteresting, dull internal external intentional accidental join separate junior senior justice injustice king subject knowledge ignorance laugh cry lawful unlawful lazy industrious, energetic land sea landlord tenant large little, small last first lawyer client lecturer student lender borrower lengthen shorten left right less more light dark, heavy like dislike, unlike likely unlikely leader follower little large, much, big lofty lowly long short loud soft loss find, win low high loyal disloyal mad sane magnetize demagnetize master servant mature immature maximum minimum me you merry mirthless, sad minority majority miser spendthrift misunderstand understand narrow wide near far, distant neat untidy new old night day noisy quiet North South obedient disobedient odd even offer refuse open shut optimist pessimist out in parent child past present patient impatient peace war permanent temporary please displease plentiful scarce poetry prose possible impossible poverty wealth powerful feeble, weak polite impolite, rude private public prudent imprudent pretty unsightly, ugly pure impure qualified unqualified rapid slow regularly irregularly rich poor right wrong, left rigid pliable, soft rough smooth satisfactory unsatisfactory security insecurity scatter collect serious trivial second-hand new sense nonsense shopkeeper customer singular plural simple complicated slim thick, stout solid liquid sober drunk speaker listener sour sweet sorrow joy sow reap stand lie straight crooked strong weak success failure sunny cloudy take give tall short tame wild teacher pupil thick thin tight slack, loose top bottom transparent opaque truth untruth, lie up down vacant occupied valuable valueless victory defeat virtue vice visible invisible voluntary compulsory vowel consonant wax wane wisdom folly within without

Any extreme we find ourselves attached is a guarantee of a life experience of some degree of polarity and so looking at our polarities we can learn where we have come from, where we are going, and determine our capacity to neutralize any situation we are having. We have the choice to do this voluntarily or we will succumb to the natural order and then be caused into these polarities….. like it or not.

Life has the innate nature to balance itself thru all polarities.

This is the way life assures this balance. This is in nature, this is in us, this is in all our interactions with one another, this is within our emotional makeup, it behooves us to make this is our spiritual understanding or perception of life. The law of polarity is dependable, and no matter our ability to manipulate, change, or redirect our experiences with each other we are all bound to this law. This is life’s way of returning to balance.

Now lets look at injustice in the world.

When an injustice arises in the world this is only the perception from a limited view stuck in one of the polarities. Life is very just and the way to realize this on a larger scale is going out of polarity. As is the case when observing life from the Akashic levels. Here we are able to see from the soul perspective the larger goings on.

The before this life and after of this life.

All too frequently we are left without this and thus we think life is unjust. It is not. Everything is in a state of dynamic balancing…. as in the verb tense of the word.

We do not always see the actions of others before this lifetime in their previous lives. As I have had many visits to the akashic I have witnessed how an action in one life is directly connected to another life with the same people. Though their actual incarnations are as different people they are the same souls. Were more people able to see the bigger picture this would fill in all the blanks we have about injustice.

For example a soul will take a life, then complete that lifetime and pass on, come back again, and this time their life will be taken in almost identical circumstances. Providing this soul the experience of having lived thru the totality of the experience and thus adding this knowledge and all that it will bring to the soul self. In the larger matrix of life, in the apparent randomness, there truly is purpose. Yet not until one has neutralized enough life experience will one be able to comprehend the great wisdom of polarity and its effects truly being lived out in this domain of the earth.

In the context of polarity I have written about the masks we wear and how the mask is actually the opposite of the very true thing we are feeling. Our masks are the natural effect of polarity. We cannot escape this fact. Thus it is wise to learn about the masks we wear and unmask ourselves to determine the cause of our own effect of polarity. And then choose to neutralize voluntarily or be subject to the law of life of polarity.

My love of life has grown significantly while my own experience of suffering has decreased once I became familiar with polarity and its powerful way. I have learned the value of voluntarily unmasking myself and choosing to end uncomfortable extremes. I have learned I may choose over and over a middle ground. I have avoided the extreme polar expressions of others around me and stayed out of drama drama drama. And I have learned to respect the law of BALANCE and its application in my life thru polarity. My journey is far from over as I continuously become aware of my own polarizations.

“Polarity is the guarantee of life assuring that you come face to face with that which you do not understand in yourself and others. About life itself! As spiritual beings engaged in physicality you will guarantee an overall experience of all that your soul seeks. Half of it could be uncomfortable, half of it could be comfortable. This is the nature of one law of life. How will you choose to be aware of what life tells you? Your polarities will give you much information. Study this, learn this.”

Core of spirit within me speaks to me this day

shared with aloha.

The Masks we wear………………………core spirituality for your discernment

To hide ones face, or self brings to my mind the magnitude of confusion prevalent in the world today. The mask is a projection from a place inside ourselves that permits us to be in the world and not be seen authentically. This is very very confusing to us! The mask is an idea we want others to see about us though it is not even real. Hidden behind the masks we wear are the brightest and the darkest elements of ourselves.

The mask is a role we take on and play when we do not know who we really are. The mask provides a safe expression while holding unresolved feelings and ideas. The mask hides our darkest ideas of ourselves while we struggle thru the process of living. This mask will often portray the exact opposite of what is truly behind it. Giving the impression to the world that you are something you are not.

The mask covers up the talents, the real feelings, and the brightest parts of ourselves. The mask is a convenient cover up when do not want to do the inner work of going deep into our selves. The mask is the idea, the religion, the group, the identification with something other than the authentic self that holds the place for us in life, just like an actor on a stage. That actor is not really the character portrayed though he does want you to believe….

We believe our masks. And this is off the mark!

We believe the masks others show us. And this is totally off the mark.

When we interact with a person’s mask, without considering what is behind that mask, we are missing the point, off the target, out of the ball park, in the wrong place with each other. Time spent talking to a mask will not bring the results we want. It never works. Never resolves the problem, the conflict, or the situation.

Until the mask comes off!

When I see the masks people wear I see the following:

the mask of a smile hides a sadness

the mask of the bully hides someone is who is afraid

the mask of intelligence hides a person who has no thoughts of their own

the mask of giving hides a real taker

the mask of kindness hides ulterior motives

the mask of overpowering hides tremendous powerlessness

the mask of  assuredness hides a lack of confidence

the mask of being right hides doubt and lack of standing

the mask of righteousness hides insidious lack of self knowing

the mask of belligerence hides the voice of “help me”

the mask of intoxication ( its fun to get drunk get high) hides a loss of personal boundary and self control

the mask of sweetness hides the bitter and the sour and the forlorn

the mask of superiority hides the depths of inferiority

the mask of authority hides self deception

the mask of togetherness hides the separations

the mask of loud screaming hides the cries of deep hurting and unresolved pain

the mask of control hides the out of control

the mask of manipulation hides the loss of trust, the loss of love, and the lack of understanding how things really work

the mask of weakness hides the fear of taking action

the mask of  over achievement hides the unfulfilled and belief in being “less than”

the mask of success hides failure

the mask of boasting hides a diminished little image of self

the mask of bigger hides smaller

the mask of forgiveness hides the ineptitude of genuine loving

the mask of authority hides false power

the mask of happiness hides misery

the mask of money and material richness hides the emptiness within

the mask of exhorting external social issues hides the real issues inside the self

While any of these traits could be genuine traits and thus none of this would apply.

When they are worn as masks these traits are all hiding something. And whenever we interact with them not knowing they are only the mask the person or group is wearing we are in deep duu-duu!

These are simply a few of my own observations and certainly NOT the definitive qualities hidden behind the masks. Anything can be hidden behind a mask!

ANYTHING!

I am repeatedly amazed at the lack of awareness and self truth I encounter listening to people struggling in their relationships. To me, people are really talking to each others masks. Never quite getting to the real issues! And I realize why this happens so much in our lives.

I realized that in order to understand that one is actually speaking with someones mask they themselves need to take off their own mask. That so many people are masked in life, masked in their self perceptions, generates a field of emptiness and a lack of  genuine exchange.

To get IT….  one must reveal themselves, and take off the illusion, take off the projection, get friggin real.

We will not resolve our predicaments when we all walk around in life presenting ourselves thru the masks we wear, unless maybe you are a detective. Haha! Ordinarily though this is just a masquerade party, a dress up, a convincing, an effort to to be real that is impossible.

Impossible!

When we ourselves mask our true feelings, our true intentions with one another we cannot reach genuine connection. When we are unaware that we are wearing a mask we tend to repeat scenarios over and over and over.

Replaying dramas, replaying the game of our hidden inadequacies, avoiding genuine power.

Genuine power arises from being real.

Genuine power arises from authenticity.

Genuine power begins the moment we realize we are wearing a mask and take that mask off.

Then we can begin to offer the world and each other something that stops the circling around, the repetitions of drama, drama, drama. Genuine power drops the mask, leaves the masquerade party, and allows the feelings of vulnerability to exist whilst the real you shows up.

The game of life has now begun and we can truly have a good time.

But not until those masks come off!

“When spirit takes on physicality there is the problem of thinking one is the mask one projects. To resolve any problem effectively requires the awareness of this. To become familiar with your masks is all part of the process of living, and to voluntarily remove your masks is also an important action you must take.”

“To have your mask ripped away when you least expect it happens all the time on earth. You can prevent this embarrassing yet sometimes necessary thing from happening by volunteering to unmask yourself.”

“By practicing unmasking with trusted individuals, and in private you can allow yourself to become comfortable without wearing your mask. This can be a marvelous activity. Many humans do have one or two people with whom they take their masks off. And then just before going out into the world ……. they put the mask back on.”

“Practicing unmasking allows you to safely increase your circle of “real” relationships and supports your capacity to be authentic. Finding out that the actual way to live your life successfully, lovingly, and to resolve your dilemmas and conundrums requires you being real activates possibilities beyond your imagination.”

“Increase your capacity to be real every time that you can and open up to the world your most authentic self. And you will feel the connection to life in a way that supports you in that genuine quality. This will lift you out of many unhappy situations.”

my core of spirit within me gently speaks…

shared with aloha

Integrity …………….core spirituality for your discernment

Integrity stands up…. in the face of darkness, evil, and inequality. Integrity addresses the lonely, the forgotten, and the misunderstood. Integrity rights the wrongs and moves beyond ineptitude. Integrity protects the weak and holds back the forces of oppression. Integrity grapples with the questions and finds the answers.

Integrity leads one thru the mystery of life seeking truth in all things.

Integrity rises thru the fear and takes over, making all things possible in the face of difficulty. Integrity is the ticket one uses to walk thru the land mines, the dangerous places,the questionable places,  the conflicts of life sensing the way with precision and right stepping. Showing the directions to take which will serve us all. So how is it that mankind has lost this remarkable quality and surrendered its place for greed, desperation, being right? Lost in the emotional intensity of the times and without bearing, we lose our way over and over without our alliances with INTEGRITY.

Integrity returns to my everyday , it is a calling to my awakening self, it is a voice amongst voices, it is a whisper and a cry. Integrity remains when all else is stripped from the self leaving only the raw and pure substance of who and what we are. It is the beginning and the ending of human experience.

Whenever I am without  answers I wait, I listen, I feel, I sense, I search and I watch. My dear friend integrity always brings to me that which I long for, that which I await. Traversing the human experience we have this marvelous internal compass, this inner voice, this body feeling called integrity.

Integrity sharpens the eye of perception….. it is a fine B.S. detector. Integrity alerts me to lies, deceptions and the masks of humanity. Revealing the mask a person or group is wearing and the real face underneath. So much of the discord and power play of people is only a façade for powerlessness, and a lack of genuine love. Integrity shows me where I truly need to respond, and how not to allow these individuals to hook me into their dramas.

I first realized the importance of integrity as I was passing thru such difficult and challenging life circumstances. Circumstances so overwhelming and so overpowering to me I had little response to the personal feelings of  injustice, the ineptitude,  meanness from another was so great. I was alone in my facing such things. No one, no where, no how arose to help me. I was on the verge of feeling powerless and lost. Until I realized I did have one thing left within me and that one thing was my own integrity. As I shifted my awareness into this I found my place in the midst of impossible crazy- making around me.

I began to refocus myself deepening into all that I could find that had integrity within me and around me. And I started to feel better. And I started to strengthen, and I started to find my way thru difficulty. I was in my twenties.

Life itself was showing me thru my pain and suffering, thru the most challenging of human circumstances ….the way thru. Not the way out….. the way thru my difficulties.

I have never forgotten , I have not turned back. I have found my alliances with integrity to be the most life saving, most door opening, most consistent source of spiritual power thru out all my life.

Integrity has become a direction. A life path.

A humbling teacher to my errors and my short comings. A guide to my uninformed little human self.

Thru integrity I have restored myself over and over and over. I have held witness to and supported others in nothing else….save integrity. This is completely awesome.

Holding integrity in the face of another as they grapple with the thick emotional stickey-ness of toxic relating acts as a rope to hold on to, to pull one out of their messiness. Providing a beam of light thru the darkness of one’s humanity like a light house on the edge of a raging, black sea.

Integrity

All religions point to this. All great teachers hold this in their words, all lasting things contain this.

How is it that it has been forgotten?

How is that man and woman have wandered into the darkness of existence leaving behind their most treasured of all tools for living?

Parents, teachers, politicians, husbands, wives, presidents, business people, church leaders. Their words, their actions, swirling in the shadows of humanity without integrity have created our present world condition. Without integrity we all hurt one another.

Without integrity we pollute our magnificent planet, destroy our animals, create artificial fear so big we invest all our resources into making the worlds largest stock of killing weapons known to mankind. For what? Where is the integrity in all this?

Without integrity we forget who we really are. We devour the dictates and words of individuals whose sole purpose is to control us. Without integrity we do not process life, instead we allow someone else to do the work. And then we cry. And then we cry!

Integrity musters up strength in the weakest of the weak in any of us. Integrity says STOP!

Integrity joins us one to the other in harmonious and unifying ways. Replacing the separateness and isolation of passing thru dark times with connection and camaraderie.

Integrity shows us WE ALL BELONG.

Integrity show us how to love, how to love more, how to love deeply, how to love the unlovable, the mean spirited, the ignorant. Integrity inside us makes it possible to love more than our own minds can conceive. The integritous human being holds the possibility when none other can. For without this one quality all is lost, forgotten, and cast aside in our humanity. It is perhaps…. a saving grace.

“To decide to walk in integrity, to honor all life, both light and dark, to pass thru time and to meet each person in integrity is a holy quality of the spirit of yourself having a human experience. It is a choice you have that will transform your earthly existence into a life of meaning and purpose. Integrity in yourself will heal your wounds, and if you have not found the way to do this your integrity will show you how. Integrity will strengthen your walk when you need to leave behind those who refuse its wondrous light. Integrity will honor all your sufferings and those of your fellow human beings as life is perfect in its balance. And as the saying goes…. ALL THINGS SHALL PASS. Integrity finds the words for you to speak when you have lost your voice and restores your place in the conversations of life.

Integrity silences you when you need not speak and shows you when all you need to do is love.

Integrity is reverent in the face of irreverence and keeps you in good standing when all around you fails, falls, and self destructs.

Integrity tells you when it is time to take a nap, and rest. To let the world go by and for you to pull away and restore yourself. All is well inside the integrity of yourself. Breathe!

Integrity is the spiritual being having the human experience.

Allow this to be.”

core of spirit within me so lovingly speaks to me this day

shared with aloha

Life experience…… the Hell realms…………. core spirituality for your discernment

My core of spirit within me reminds me that gathering all experiences, positive and negative, is what our life journeys are about. Life experience in us and thru us is how Source is growing in creation… always returning to Itself. That we have experiences that lead to more experiences that ultimately return our awareness and presence to the origin of life itself in us.

During my soul review, and then in many meditation and transformational experiences since, I have felt the immense unconditional love that Source has. This is powerful and beyond the human mind’s comprehension. There are unlimited opportunities that exist in the eternal nature of Source. Thus I do not hold to dogmas that perpetrate eternal damnation’s. The love from Source is so great it is far beyond such teachings.

In my soul review I learned about the need to have experiences both positive and negative so as to balance ourselves. To balance the places we inhabit thru life.

Thru being shown the warrior archetype of my soul I was shown many lifetimes of battle, war, and fighting I had involved myself. Once I was shown a series of lives where I was fulfilled in my soul intent to understand human power. I reviewed lives where I was in the Persian culture, where the battles were hand to hand horse to horse blade to blade. I saw myself thru a series of these lives learning to understand the  “how and why” of  every aspect of “power -over” one another. To my horror… as I witnessed my actions …I cried out to God, how could I do this? How is this allowed? The voice, The Voice of such immense love I can hardly express to you responded…. it was your desire to learn about human power. The full significance of these words resonated thru me and I felt the complete depth and meaning all thru myself…..  I was humbled by such a love, so great that even this was allowed.

I never felt judged, rather I felt the unending love as I died and I  returned to higher dimensions after each lifetime, contrary to what is taught in religions around the world.

In between these earthly incarnations I was able to over see and review my actions and then return to earthly life to go further. This series of lifetimes  took, to my knowledge,several lives finishing with one where I was in a highly political family with much material wealth. Always as a warrior I had the experiences of giving and taking power from people. I ultimately learned that I had to balance this all out, and as a result in this life time I began to choose “power-with” rather than “power-over” others.

I have reflected on this aspect of my soul review many many times. Frequently remembering that I want to choose “power – with”  vs.  “power – over”.

When we come to the earth domain we have the perfect place to develop experiences from a human perspective around power. And for our humanity power is a big big experience to learn. Ultimately to understand every aspect of what it means. From every angle, each life time, every life experience adds to the individual and collective awareness of this one simple aspect of life force. What is power from a human perspective!?

How we manage this life force is such a big part of the equation of life and the future development of mankind that we have invested millions upon millions of lives into the subject, as I have witnessed.

Yes, indeed I have seen and heard and felt the souls lost in other darker realms, these are the overflows of our human dilemmas where the soul has forgotten its source. These are the hells referred to in all religions. However what I saw and heard in these places were the cries arising from self judgments these individuals placed on themselves and one another (though they themselves still did not realize this). For I did witness….. the moment a soul would look up ….and seek out reaching finally beyond themselves …….a loving presence would deliver that soul out of their hell into the process of soul review and healing ( being made whole again).

I did not see that these hells were places specifically made as punishments made by Source, rather they were created out of the need to go somewhere else besides the heavenly, or higher realms. Thus the “hells”  developed from the need for further suffering until that soul would look up and reach out. These hells are truly sad, horrific, and dark,and lonely, and isolating. However all these qualities are originally arising from the individuals themselves. As these are the qualities of the unconscious experiences of many individuals gathered together in forgotten states of horrific misery.

Source is not specifically punishing, rather these are the natural polarities of thought and feeling arising out of the life construct of a creation designed thru a duality system of creation. The qualities of “forgiveness and mercy” are the returning aspects of our selves thru these polarities of life. And every soul seeking is answered to. Every one that I witnessed. The Source is this divinely loving. Places are created so that Source individuated, ( as each of us)  will always have a way to experience itself ultimately and then to return to the original pure nature of Itself.

Growing thru the human understandings of life and the rules here is all about our experiences and what we do with them. How we develop our selves. The trajectory of some incarnated souls is long and requires seemingly endless suffering. This is all self generated thru choice and the lack of knowledge of how life is constructed thru balances. ( action and reaction) The idea of punishment is a human interpretation of what God is about. The limited perspective of ancient humans who made such rules, (origins of Christianity in Catholicism for example) these individuals did not have the immense experience of the eternal nature of love from Source directly! And as I have written about in previous essays there were hidden agendas. ( stifling the innate inner awareness of source, versus the church teachings gave a significant amount of power over to external authorities, leading to political controls.)

An interesting experience happening more frequently that shows us the more about eternal nature of Source after death is the NDE  experiencer. Now as a result of our medical technology, and the time we live in and the current direction of the growth of our  mass human consciousness these testimonials open up the conversations about life experience in whole new ways.

Near Death Experiences  are growing and our capacity to share this thru our global communications are revealing much broader perceptions of reality. These people are bringing into our collective knowledge that surpasses the age old limited perceptions of how the larger reality is truly constructed. How and what really happens to us in life…. both in physicality and out of it. I find this fascinating!

The fear that we must face is outstanding!

We have as humans a gigantic proposition of sorts to work thru. We are facing and redefining our fears on a staggering level. The healthy fear is a major component of our experience and is significant to our safety and our slowing down. Causing us to reexamine our experiences and calculate where it is taking us. That some do not pay attention to fear out of ignorance, and haste is all part of the equation of learning. Like it or not there is fear amongst us to look right into and to move thru. I have no idea how many times I have literally trembled as I felt myself challenging fear. Though I know I have survived many many passings thru my own fears in life, one thing is for sure; I am very aware of my self generated fears! much more now than ever before. having a healthy relationship to our fear and how we hold this leads us to transcending new places.

Being delivered to new wholeness and surprising outcomes and much understanding thru passing into and beyond my fear. I have always found myself  renewed, with a brand new of idea of life. I find this amazing!

“When you learn to hold to your life experiences with a lesser grip of constriction, you access the way to  envelope the multiple levels of yourselves in physicality. Revealing a kind of wisdom in facing your fear that only comes from facing fear. That you are not destined to eternal damnation or punishment for your choices can serve the greater you, the soulful self in physicality. As you realize the life construction or matrix of duality and polarity …..each action has a reaction. You catapult yourselves thru scenarios teaching you about the purposeful meaning of life experience.

Learning to develop heart intelligence that informs you in a way that serves your greater good. Lessening the repetitions of unnecessary suffering. Uplifting your day to day life in way that becomes pleasing and harmonious. Creating an understanding of your fellow humans who are suffering from their choices. Silently holding this place of understanding supports the painful journeys of those still not aware of the consequences of their actions, their own choices! Learning to become a peaceful human in the midst of such circumstances has a stabilizing resonance for your planet. Let it happen, go thru those fears, decide and then decide again. Give yourself permission to grow and develop. This is the divine purpose of experience for you all now.”

Core of spirit within me informs me this day.

Shared with aloha.

Hawaii Aloha

VERSE 1:
E Hawai’i e ku’u one hanau e
Ku’u home kulaiwi nei
‘Oli no au i na pono lani ou
E Hawai’i, aloha e

HUI:
E hau’oli na ‘opio o Hawai’i nei
‘Oli e! ‘Oli e!
Mai na aheahe makani e pa mai nei
Mau ke aloha, no Hawai’i

VERSE 2:
E ha’i mai kou mau kini lani e
Kou mau kupa aloha, e Hawai’i
Na mea ‘olino kamaha’o no luna mai
E Hawai’i aloha e

(repeat hui)

VERSE 3:
Na ke Akua e malama mai ia ‘oe
Kou mau kualona aloha nei
Kou mau kahawai ‘olinolino mau
Kou mau mala pua nani e

(repeat hui)
VERSE 1:
O Hawaii, O sands of my birth
My native home
I rejoice in the blessings of heaven
O Hawaii, aloha.

CHORUS:
Happy youth of Hawaii
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Gentle breezes blow
Love always for Hawaii.

VERSE 2:
May your divine throngs speak
Your loving people, O Hawaii
The holy light from above
O Hawaii, aloha.

(repeat chorus)

VERSE 3:
God protects you
Your beloved ridges
Your ever glistening streams
Your beautiful flower gardens.

(repeat chorus)

Bruddah IZ ~ Hawai’i Aloha

One of the most beautiful songs ever sung.
“We shall extend and display respect to all others which reflects our own appreciation of humanity. We shall carry our pride quietly, neither boasting of ourselves nor speaking badly of others – often a dishonest method of self-praise. Yet we must be unashamed of our principles and honest in our criticisms.”

~ Hawaiian Code of Conduct

Celtic Woman – The Call

there is a voice inside each of us… and then there is the call……..

Truth telling………………..core spirituality for your discernment

Truth telling leads us on a journey that reveals many new and different subtle clues to the purposeful nature of our life experiences, opening doors of awareness into our relationship with self and each other.

The commitment to living truthfully has been a big one for me. Growing up in a dysfunctional family, where there was much hidden motivation and behavior I was, as a boy-child, aghast at an early age about the lies. The lies we tell ourselves and one another. I was horrified at the level of dishonesty around me. Thus I grew to adopt a commitment to telling the truth. To staying honest. This became a personal weapon so to speak, learning to be true!

The way our lives shift when we commit to being honest and truthful is huge. Immensely so when the social climate around us is filled with covert agendas everywhere.  And as we uncover the hidden messages of inner dialogues inside our heads, as we persuade our minds away from honesty we literally reshape our reality. Away from  truthfulness ….generates much human conflict and pain!

To engage in an honest evaluation of life will shift ones priorities  into whole new possibilities.

I learned that speaking my own truth can have upsetting outcomes to some people, thus thru the years I have cultivated a new respect for others when sharing my own experience of my truth. Initially as I realized the tremendous freeing effect living truthfully was I thought I had to share this with everyone. I learned thru many hard moments this is not the case. However living in honest truthfulness is! I find immense levels of dishonesty in our humanity all the time as uncomfortable topics arise, and hidden motivations are revealed.

There is a climate of skirting the truth…avoiding the truth, denying the truth, distorting the truth, and killing the truth all around us.

Watching this go on  around me I am compelled to do my own inner work, it is not enough to simply point fingers! Ultimately this leads me into the self.

Working in my practice with people in pain, I often feel the inner sensors of honesty go up whenever we approach areas of sensitivity to the truth of ones inner pains, the dark side of our honesty. I see it and I notice, bringing attention thru silent witness to my clients. I do not always have permission to comment. However living in this world in a state of honest attention does redirect and make possible many opportunities for corrections with people. Practicing honesty silently has an effect that is many times greater than words.

I am particularly staggered by the levels of a lack of truthfulness in our public servants, our government representatives ( lobbying in congress by private profit driven corporates, refusing to work together for greater good by stopping all progress, representing the few instead of the whole of us) , by those in our military operations ( hidden agendas with the toying with other countries politics,black op military spending, the immense proliferation of the most dangerous killing weapons known to mankind), and those in corporate business where the real motivations for success are profit at any cost ( insurance companies, food industry ( the horrific Monsanto drive to control DNA and seeds), pharmaceuticals ( profiting thru the mass prescription of dangerous drugs into the populace and billions of dollars feeding into congressional lobbyist agendas for profits) ,the prison industry ( perpetrating laws that prolong incarcerations), the mega-medias ( that report only views subject to a select few and of a purely negative world view), oil companies stealing peoples inherent rights, indigenous rights, American medical system and it’s profit driven motivations making medicine available to the few rather the everyone thru exorbitant pricing) and by religious zealots ( personal power issues, people controlling issues, suppression of innate truth and self empowerment). All these individuals and their followers present hidden motivations for their various agendas. The lack of truth telling is obvious thru the disharmony this perpetrates in our humanity!

When we commit to telling the truth we also shift our perceptions of what is true around us. When we begin to discern the social dialogues we engage in with one another and the decisions that are made, and the obvious outcomes that serve the few rather than everyone, our deepening of honest living becomes even more valuable and this can get quite uncomfortable. I believe initially this uncomfortable feeling acts as a deterrent for many individuals. Thus thru the practice of truth telling and honesty over time there grows a greater good bigger than all the falsehoods. And eventually the truthfulness feels better than the lies.

This is so very important individually as we evolve  and develop thru life. As I have grown older I have also grown more honest with myself. However painful the realizations of the distortions I have held, the truth must come out. Emotional truthfulness! And sometimes , for me this is very hard to face!

Emotional truthfulness is empowering. As a therapist I have witnessed the release in people as they finally release distortions of thinking and feeling they have lived for their whole lifetimes. To see the transformation in an individual when this happens is enlightening. The depth of and layers of falsehoods as they leave return a person to their most pure integrity. I have seen people actually shine… actually radiate after they have released a falsehood they have invested themselves. I have watched human bodies get taller, have more vitality instantly as they are restored.  It is a truly remarkable site to see.

In myself the most amazing result I experienced from my commitment to telling the truth to myself, besides being more happy, is finding my own honest voice. Not one pounded in to me from my family, or from a religion, or from my society… my own real… intrinsic…… self. There are really no words to describe the uplifting, lighter feeling and reality that arises from owing ones own true self hood and the expression of ones own voice.

It feels divine.

However in my own nature I have come to realize that there is no one arrival place to truth telling. The psyche is deep, and vast. There has been a life long constant reviewing. Many day to day efforts towards remaining true. Sometimes I think the hardest issues of internal truth telling take a long time to come to terms with. The bigger truths of the self, are preceded by many smaller truths as the personality becomes stronger and stronger. Thus shaping us to be  more capable of withstanding the immensity of honest self evaluation and personal presence.

Many relationships fall in the process. Not everyone is on the same path at the same time. I have learned to go on. Many times alone. The surprising delight of this is the new people I have met and the greater joy of having more meaningful people in my life. I have found this to be true at every major turn of the development of my own honest truth telling.

The first and most significant aspect of truth telling is to me, within myself. This is the where the greatest leaps and most difficult places really exist. Inside self. The arrival of the soul self is a larger plane of the self. It is bigger! It has much more heart,insight,presence, energy than that of a mere human body. Truth telling with self catapults us beyond our minds ideas of self. And this is disconcerting at first. The soulful self is not bound by the same internal dictates that is our inherited human-ness. The soulful self is directly connected in conscious awareness of itself as a spiritual being to Source.

A spiritual being where life has a much larger richness of expression and life possibilities. And the capacity to see thru the very limited ideas of a humanity steeped in dishonesty, distortions and denials, covert agendas and fundamentalist beliefs. To live with this kind of presence inside self opens up connectivity with life in far reaching ways. To realize the unseen laws of life and how they are operating is vastly informative. ( for example action and reaction….. and how I invest my energies actually effect another human or animal across the world whether I say it out loud or not).

Day to day living transforms.

“All of humanity is experiencing this John, watch as you see the horrors of realizations arise as your humanity wakes up to itself, watch as miraculous new possibilities are created too. The telling of ones truth is increasing daily on your planet. One by one you are all confronting yourselves, confronting yourselves in one another. Whole groups of you are allowing your truth to be heard. This is a trans-formative time for humanity as every aspect of society is trembling with a larger truth of itself. The old is out the new is in. each generation of oyour peoples holds another aspect of truth. This is the divine plan for your world. Pay attention, question, be careful and honor one another as you wake up. Create time to relax in nature and allow yourselves to become more than you ever thought you were. Spiritual beings having a human experience!”

Core of spirit within me speaks

shared with aloha.

Tony Woody’s – NDE & Spiritually Transformative Experience

Tony Woody served in the Navy as a flight engineer for 22 years. While in service he had countless life-changing experiences which he shares including a Near-death experience, a spiritually transformative experience being in the presence of God as well as encounters with U.F.O’s.

NDE’S ….. near death experiences….. I have found that the testimonials of these people reflect experience which breaks open the rigid religious dogmas perpetrated here on Earth. there are thousands and thousands of testimonials now available to listen. People coming back from beyond this life with experiences they are sharing into our collective. these findings compare to my own spiritual experiences almost identically. if you are unfamiliar with NDE’s you may be fascinated at their stories.

The Act of Will……………… core spirituality for your discernment

 

There is a great will , there is a little will. There is the “will of the people” and there is “thy will be done”.

When looking into the act of will we make choices that develop experiences that become the design of our lives.

That we give ourselves over to the idea of our will has significant purpose meaning and consequence.

 

The awareness of our will is effected by many external factors some directed at our greater good some directed towards someone else s idea of good.

 

The effects of exercising our will can be felt directly in the corporeal reality of our body. There is a feedback inside each of us.

 

The decisions that arise out of our truest will lead us to our most significant learning, our most outrageous discoveries and our greatest leaps of personal development and unfoldment.

 

I often reflect on the idea of the will. It is a daily on going process for me. I make reality selections based on my sense of my most truthful will. Weighing the options inside my awareness as I choose the responses to life, to unfolding directions, towards all my relations.

 

The act of will has become for me, a kind of co creative directive. A directive that has arisen from the years of learning how the action of pursuing a will of truth-fullness feels. I still ask, I still question, I still weigh things. It has become a major aspect of my day to day existence that has grown over time to have a deep and meaningful place in every moment. I still find myself going unconcious at times with regard to my will, slipping in and out of staying connected to the truth-fullness of my core self. It is such a commitment to pay attention to the will. And not to go off, not to stray from my deepest core of will.

In the act of being a spiritual being having a human experience the act of will is one of the most powerful day to day experiences one can have. Form the smallest seeming decisions to the biggest. It is a constant directive for me. And provides meaning to the seemingly insignificant occurrences of our daily lives. This provides a rich experience to daily living I find very enjoyable.

 

Upon dismantling the artificial authorities in life, the false religious teachings, the false voices of those who seek power around us thru their religious views, the artificial authorities of  social norms, the academic world, and all the falsehoods of this reality….. we are left raw with nothing but our own internal process and inner sense of things.

Contained in this place, inside us is our own real genuine greater will. I love this place. I seek this place inside me, thru quietness, introversion, thru learning to be gentle and patient. I like the pauses in life….. I find this place over and over in ways that surprise me. As core within me informs my mind in ways that reveal such credible improvements, inclusive living. I find this inner resource astounding.  

 

I love this place inside us very much.

 

This is the place where there is a vastness of cohesion in chaos, much understanding where there is none, where there is truth surrounded by human falsehoods …the way is opened up.

 

The possible resides within the external world of the impossible.

 

There is such tremendous personal freedom inside us when we learn to discern our most intrinsic inner will.

With this personal freedom there is a source of energy that transcends external circumstances  in a way that provides flow to life and connectedness to the mundane reality of the ALL THAT IS. 

 

The work of clearing our shadow selves, the work of learning to disengage in the unhealthy dialogues and behaviors of this world around us connects us to our purest sense of inner will.

 

The development of awareness of our emotions opens our capacity to filter life, thru our body we can feel the most pure emanations of our true will within. Healing the wounded psyche we inherit thru our families we can return ourselves to our greatest good. The act of healing shifts from the absolute necessary work of our survival into sanity out of the insanity of this world. The act of healing these hurts then transforms into a gift that lives in us that only wants to serve. Healing all our hurts thru choosing the will of our deepest soulful self becomes the healing of everyone and everything around us as all the hurts arise to be loved and nurtured.

 

I often find myself simply loving someone, and not providing answers. The silent act of loving opens the possibility of their finding those answers for themselves.

 

The act of will takes the most unholy of human reality and makes it holy…. makes it whole! I find this amazing. I am humbled by how my heart beats more simply from writing this sentence.

 

Often in my life the act of will becomes something greater than my own sense of self, it is bigger than me as it flows thru me and I realize many things. The act of will, the pure will, the greater will of life actually “lives us”, as us , thru us. To me it is miraculous.

 

Within the act of will, of the greater will, is the most fierce, the most mercy full expression of what is possible in any moment. To allow self to be shaped by this greater will is an experience that will shift and redirect at any moment anything, any possibility that arises. It is constant…it is ceaseless… it is totally resource-full when there appears to be no resources. I find this amazing.

 

To engage in life fully requires learning about our greater will. Investing our energies where they are best suited and provide experiences that draw to us perfection and beauty.

 

Once upon healing a tremendous pain, a hurt so deep that my body was aching for years I released a horrible fierce cry. A cry that rippled into sobs and opened my heart so completely that I fell upon the floor and drained out years of pain. Which then turned into generations of hurt leaving my body. Releasing out of me so deeply I felt the letting go lift out of my very bones, my skeleton. Emptied out and drained I lay still in the emptiness. There I was lifted out of myself. I found myself flying in space thru the cosmos past whole galaxies, past vastness that is impossible to describe. I was delivered to a magnificent light. A light so great and far reaching and so encompassing I immediately felt the words… I am home. This light emanated the most unceasing greatest most profound feeling of love that I can even give words. I floated in this light as I received tremendous downloads of information of Source. I knew I was at the center of creation and that I also had a spark of this light in me as me. There was no longer any question. In this experience I felt the loving will of source. I learned that the greater will is one of goodness. I realized the work of being human and the value of honoring our humanity, our darkest selves, and our innermost pure will. And my life has never been the same. As I returned I brought with me the awareness of this light. I have felt and seen it now for years. It is within this creation, behind the creations of humanity, it is the source for the true life of humanity. And ever since I have learned to weed out the false creations, the falsehoods of those who would have us believe we are anything less than truly divine beings having a human experience.

 

“The act of will is at the root of your human experience. Every difficulty has the capacity to bring you into the awareness of your greater will. To connect that life is about living fully. Stay close to your greater will to learn what is next….”

 

core of spirit within me whispers..

 

shared with aloha

Neil Kramer on The Inner Work – The Role Of Emotions In Raising Consciousness

A light discussion about the role of the emotions in raising our consciousness. how this effects our relationships, our planet, and how we avoid true emotional growth. How the path we walk is customized to each of us. finding the core of our own spirituality.

2014 The Year Ahead

“There is no greater intimacy than being known by another. In loving each other deeply and unconditionally, we come to know our true grace. Let us gather in 2014, and let us gather often.”

by Neil Kramer

http://neilkramer.com/2014-the-year-ahead.html

Neil Kramer: Dissolving the Shadow

Neil Kramer: Dissolving the Shadow, Walking the Scared Path, September 28 2011. Why is it that so many people are willfully uninterested in pursing the true nature of reality? How is it that so many people are lost in “The Construct”?

Michael Tsarion – Psychology of Inauthentic Life……………… core spirituality for your discernment

Michael Tsarion discusses the psychology of mans existance and its relationship with selfhood. Globalism, collectivism and diversity being sold at the expense of mans true self and walking the Siddartha path. C-realm podcast, late 2011.

“The Shadow”……….. core spirituality for your discernment

The shadow is the name Carl Jung, the well know Swiss psychiatrist, gave to that part of ourselves that is hidden from the self. It is in the dark side of our awareness. Not that it is dark, it is simply not seen and is unconscious. It is in this unconscious aspect of our selves that we have the  counterpoints to our conscious self, the self we show the world!

 

The shadow is the place where we put all the qualities of ourselves we do not like, do not want to see or that we deny in ourselves. It is the place for what we reject and find horrible, and unacceptable. Where we store patterns of behavior that are deplorable. It is from within this place that like a movie projector, we “project” our most unloved parts of ourselves out into the world. On to our families, friends, work associates, governments… anyone or anything outside our selves!

 

Anyone or anything that is not us!

 

That our unconscious self plays a large role in our emotional lives is an awareness to integrate into our lives and is the purpose of this writing today! Because we do not always have all the facts, nor do we always understand ourselves or one another and this is in part due to as Jung refers to it “the shadow” that is a part of ourselves.

 

I think of it like it this; as I stand in front of a person their shadow is cast behind them, I can see it, but until the person looks they do not. What is in our shadow is seen by others easily, yet we ourselves do not see inside our own shadow till we look!

 

Usually everyone around you, those who know you well, all know what is in your shadow, yet you do not! As Carl Jung wrote “the shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors and so comprise the whole historical aspect of the unconscious.” 

The shadow self is actually real, however it is not so concrete…. it is a way to address the feelings, emotions, motivations, and thoughts that we do have that are unconscious. An extreme of this would be the familiar classical story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

 

Many times I have written about ownership and this too is a powerful place to own up and do the inner work of emotional awareness. I find most people when confronted directly about their shadow contents recoil. This is a very difficult subject for many people to face in themselves. Myself included! I know this because of my own difficulty in learning to understand and own my shadow self. I have worked with this for many years and still do to this very day.

 

I am astounded every time I learn it is not “them”, it is not the other person, it is really my own feelings when it comes to difficult emotions.

 

This has been one of the most challenging aspects of walking the path of authentic self awareness and deepening into my own sense of spirituality.

 

That people with similar emotional states might “trigger” me is how I most often come into the awareness of the shadow, the discovery of my own shadow. It has happened every time I have found a highly charged emotional state of feelings that I had subscribed to someone else, or something else, that actually it was inside my own self where the feelings actually came from that I needed to process. I learned the valuable awareness of owning my own projections!

 

In my own case this was particular to spiritual issues relating to religious teachings and personal identity. I have had to take apart and look at many ideas of a religious nature and personal identification to see how I actually had limiting, painful, unconscious beliefs and notions right inside myself. Family ideas I inherited, religious teachings I absorbed as a child. Thus stopping my own projections out into the world. This is valuable, personal, and potent stuff to handle.

 

In my youth I realized I had a non traditional notion of spirituality and growing up in a religious educational environment I was bumping into teachings with the nuns in my school. I found myself angered and hurt, frustrated at all their rules and ideas of god. Until later in my thirties I finally realized I had internalized and held the very same limiting beliefs myself. I was aghast at how deeply I felt these ideas inside myself. I was conflicted with more than one set of feelings and I needed to address this. 

 

Once I started to do emotional release therapy I found the depth of these feelings were not just all around me in other people….they were inside me. Thus I began a rigorous weeding out and redefining of the values I was raised with and replaced those values with  what felt more appropriate to me. Those feelings of anger, pain, injustice, intolerance, limitation, flowed out of me releasing me from their hold on my psyche. I was amazed that I had projected my own feelings on people, the church, and the world in the way I had, and so I stopped projecting and started to own my uncomfortable feelings.

 

This opened up for me an inner state of lightness that was refreshing, and enjoyable. And so I began to find more and more ways I had projections placed onto people. My sense of personal relationship began to transform as I learned to make peace with myself. And found that so many times who and what I was angry or upset with was really something inside myself. Totally revelatory! I have never stopped the inner work with my shadow self yet!

 

The layers of “undoing” necessary to arrive to one’s own core self require taking away and taking apart all the ideas, feelings, emotions that are not intrinsically of self. These can be social, familial, religious, parental for example. They can be expectations from all the people around you that raised you, taught you, and coached you thru life. Many of these things were also their projections!

 

Incredible! Repairing the psyche… the hurts, pains, and wounded-ness reveals the core spiritual potential of the soul as it desires to live life as a human being.

 

The healed self then has the capacity to actually embrace the magnificent and potent qualities of the soul itself. Thus giving us the tools to withstand greater levels of negativity in this world. The tools to not engage in unnecessary conflicts and to see thru them and thru the paradoxical nature of life, to see beyond so much illusion! The presence of the soul in us has tremendous capacity to rejuvenate and transcend human limitations. While our humanity does seem to have much limitation our souls seem to have unlimited – ness while expressing in us as us .

 

I find this absolutely amazing!

 

While the effort to clean up our shadow is staggering it is necessary. The outcome of becoming congruent in our emotions thoughts and beliefs happens as we own our most denied feelings. This congruency of feeling aligns us with a much larger awareness, beyond the little realities of the shadow self. Opening us to our real talents, and gifts which lead us to our purpose and self expression here on earth. The benefits of owning our shadow far outweigh the uncomfortable passage thru denials, thru the angry, jealous, rejected, unhappy states of our shadow selves.

 

We all have choices in life and the ability to make these choices is our spiritual nature exercising greater and greater capacities to transcend limiting situations and difficult emotions. When we choose to act purely out of our shadow we may call to ourselves tremendous pain and unhappiness. We then will have a repeat scenario where we have the option to choose again. And thus illuminate components of our human nature held inside our shadow. Once we learn to own our shadow self and respect the emotions we have denied, we are able to express and release these emotions and thoughts. When we clear out our shadow self, the unconscious, we have an inner development that replaces all  the scripts of the shadow behaviors and these new scripts are based on qualities of integrity, and wellness. This stops the repeating of scenarios that show up causing us to re examine our feelings and our relationships over and over. We can  either rewrite our relationships from this new standpoint or drop the relationship, as the reason no longer exists to carry it further. We can release ourselves and the other person peacefully to resolve their side of an issue in the time that best suits them.

 

I have found whole new life experiences awaiting me after clearing significant shadow elements of my own psyche.

 

“The awareness  of light and dark, when it comes to the human experience, requires significant attention. When we shift that awareness inwardly taking responsibility for what is happening to us, and stop blaming outside forces we open ourselves to tremendous internal forces of strength, of courage, and we deliver our bodies, minds, spirits, into further possibilities that move us outside the realms of our former more limited selves. This is a co creative act. This is a powerful component of being human. This is a magnificent expression of core spirituality having the human experience.”

 

Core of spirit within me gently reminds me this day

 

shared with aloha

Emotional Awareness………core spirituality……………. for your discernment

Emotional awareness is the perception of, the identification of, the interpretation of, the expression of our individual and collective feelings thru the vehicle of our human body and our own unique experiences in life. I choose to define this in this way so as to provide a common ground to base my writing today. And to share my thoughts on our emotional nature as it relates to my own core of spirituality.

Feelings, emotional thoughts, and sensations that we receive thru our bodies, and that we send one to another are important to us because this is how we are informed by experiences, by one another, by our environment! Without the development of emotional awareness we are left without valuable information that relates to our intrinsic experience of what truth is, what reality is. This effects the hundreds of decisions each one of us make, whether we are consciously choosing or unconsciously choosing (and from my stand point there is a lot of unconscious choice being acted upon look at the state of our present world … poverty, military spending, economics, persecutions based on religion, gender and sexual identity, political motivations, for example).

Developing our emotional awareness opens up new experiences to us that encourage our continuous discovery about the real nature and origin of our feelings. This is valuable because many times we identify with feelings that do no originate as our own. For instance we are born into families where certain emotional themes present themselves repeatedly. Blindly accepting certain emotional tones as ours can cause much disharmony. When we do not intrinsically feel family realities as our own we have the power of choice to choose to go differently than other members of our own clans. Sometimes we leave our original clan gravitating towards a more realistic expression of who we are. Another common situation is groups…. for example religious groups of people collectively agree to certain emotional models of life. When we know our own emotional nature we can select those intrinsic spiritual- emotional tones that relate to our inner most development and nature.

Of course when we do not have emotional awareness we can replace our emotional themes with those of the group and avoid any real authentic sense of personal internal processing and follow the group. ( sheeple = sheep +people)

I find this particularly common in many ways. Religious, political, social, economical, the group identification with emotional themes is varied and provides a “follower” a place to belong. Whether there is a real sense of emotional identification or not. This brings a question to mind about the amount of sickness, pain medication, abuse, pain and suffering I feel around us in this world. I often wonder if individuals have truly looked inside themselves to discern their own true emotional climate and alignments with certain emotional group themes.

Safety! One avenue of investigation to emotional awareness is the cultivation of safety around emotional dialogue we create with one another. Specifically when it comes to difficult emotions. Learning to create safe zones around topics that are highly charged in the effort to look fully into and explore how it is we actually feel without being judged can have very significant results. I have learned in my own private practice that listening to individuals process their past memories, or past experiences and then to be allowed to come to personal new conclusions results in many new emotional aware states for these individuals that have much to add to their consciousness today.

Frequently emotional themes are set as children and will evolve into much more fitting emotional realities as adults! Thus questioning feelings and emotions have significant value! Many group members are trained to accept and repeat without questioning! My neighborhood is a target for several local churches where individuals with good intent knock on every door proselytizing. How many times have people come to my door espousing religious beliefs, flipping thru their bibles, quoting and repeating? When I question them personally their response is just another bible quote! Emotionally to me I feel a sense of robotic response. When I question again there is more quoting of verse. Numerous times we simply reach a dead end, they quoting bible verse, me asking asking questions!

Punishment! “Punishment for feeling” is also very interesting in our society. Schools, churches especially, political arenas, parents, family groups, work groups, social organizations all share some degree of shaming their members for expressing “certain” feelings.

This shame has a wounding effect on the human being that can shape a person’s perceptions for many years.

Shutting down emotionally the rich expression of and introspection that could happen if their were safety for emotional exploration. In the bodies of clients on my treatment table I have felt and then listened to shameful memories come right out of adult bodies, that were originally anchored there as children or teenagers! These feeling memories are stored inside our cells, tissues, organs. Safe, loving space to feel and release these emotionally charged memories opens up space in the body and breath deepens. I find this amazing! We all pay a staggering price for the lasting effects of an unsafe environment for learning about the wide range of human emotions.

Commitment! Commitment to inner emotional health and well being has far reaching effects both on our selves presently and also on future generations. Commitment to stay the course thru the exploration of how we feel has a grounding effect in the midst of chaos.

Especially emotional chaos.

I have learned that my own commitment acts as a stabilizer as I move thru different emotional charges. Without this commitment I would be “flying off the handle”, setting into motion reaction after reaction after reaction. The words people say to one another without a commitment to emotional health are damaging especially when conflicting emotions and perceptions of feelings arise! There is a level of objectivity with self, with one another that is cultivated thru our commitment to emotional well being.

The way with which we dialogue about each other reflects our commitments to emotional health. The rampant emotionally painful way our media has developed in talking about one another is , to me, staggering! Careless disregard for the emotional well being of another, is well………. so so damaging.

People what are we saying to and about one another? The emotional tones of our social media are very immature. There are painful statements made by adults everyday in the world medias! This is only the tip of the iceberg. What are we communicating to each other in our daily lives? People model this behavior and then repeat it over and over. I find this staggering.

Judgment and discernment are two differently charged emotional ways to handle emotions that are difficult. How often I have thought that judgment was chosen as the way to handle a situation, rather than discernment. This has been the case in my own family of origin many times. Leaving me feeling quite saddened.

Putting people in little psychic boxes of shame!

Where is the emotional awareness in all that? In our efforts to be good, and to be right we need to be clear on the differences in judging a persons feelings and discerning their feelings. In this way we can learn to resolve differences and make new outcomes for our futures that are peaceful and mutually respectful! ( is that not what we really want?)

Repressions! Whenever we come upon a sudden surprising outburst of emotion that catches us off guard in ourselves or another I know there is an emotion needing my attention. Because humans dislike uncomfortable emotions we often avoid them, and distance ourselves. We tell ourselves something that allows us to get away from feeling something we DO NOT WANT TO FEEL! ( headaches, stomach aches, vague body aches etc. ) Then a situation arises and it all starts over again. When we avoid our feelings, when we repress our feelings, they can pop up again in the most amazing ways even with complete strangers! At the most inconvenient times! ( or so we think). Developing emotional awareness does not guarantee this will not happen, however I have learned to bring down the unexpected out bursts significantly.

The most valuable result of developing emotional awareness I have found in myself is empathy! To maintain a vigilant awareness of my emotions and follow them thru to their origins has led me into a place of universal understanding about myself and the human condition. A place of not only understanding but also how we all share the same feelings! And at the core of all the emotions is a universal love and connection to everything.

To have empathy, which does by its very nature reveal connection is a marvelous experience.

Really no one is alone. Though our emotional climates do separate us temporarily this is only on the surface. Underneath all that is really the need to love and be loved. Once again love is seeking to express thru our emotional nature. When we develop our emotional awareness our capacity to love and be loved increases significantly. This smooths out the rough edges of reality around us making life here much more enjoyable.

To know another as one’s self is divine.

This divine reflection encourages much more creative potential in this world and sets a different course of action that generates possibility beyond current imagination. As we develop and heal our painful emotional memories,as we heal our emotional actions towards one another our spiritual nature is revealed. As we reveal our spiritual nature to one another we are able to look thru the paradox of life. To see thru the conflicts around us and hold the space for one another to arrive into greater and greater spiritual presence. We are each working thru something ……so we can hold the place of understanding and empathy for each other as we make our way thru the human experience.

“John, this is precisely the divine plan. To find and hold the space of universal understanding for yourself and then one another as your humanity develops this tremendous emotional awareness. This is how you lift each other up and then learn to co create with a much happier, more loving expression of life.

To deny your emotions generates immense disharmony to your planet and perpetrates suffering for millions upon millions of individuals, millions of animals, and eco systems thru out your world.

What will be your choice today with what you feel? Do you want to be happy or do you want to suffer? This is up to each and every one of you. Decide and then decide again. Learn to raise your own vibrational nature to a healthy and well place today! One day at a time.”

Core of spirit within me speaks

shared with aloha

Having Emotional Reactions to Your Emotions

What Is a Secondary Emotion?

Before we can understand what secondary emotions are, we first need to learn what primary emotions are. We can broadly divide emotions into two types: primary emotions and secondary emotions.

Primary emotions are those that occur as a direct result of encountering some kind of cue.

For example, if someone cuts you off in traffic, you will likely experience anger or irritation. Anger and irritation, in this case, would be considered a primary emotion because the emotion occurred as a direct consequence of encountering some kind of event (being cut off in traffic). Likewise, if you have a memory come up about losing someone you care about, the primary emotion that will likely come up is sadness.

Primary emotions are generally “fast-acting.” That is, they occur in close proximity to the event that brought them on. Primary emotions are important because they provide us with information about our current situation and get us ready or motivated to act in some way.

Secondary emotions, on the other hand, are less useful. Secondary emotions are the emotions we have in response to a primary emotion.

Let’s go back to the example of someone cutting you off in traffic. You have the primary emotional response of anger. However, let’s say that you were brought up to believe that it is not OK to be angry, or when you feel anger, you think you are going to lose control and do something impulsive. If you evaluate your primary emotional response of anger in this way, you are likely going to feel shame or anxiety in response to being angry.

Secondary emotions don’t pass that quickly. They tend to stick around for a long time. They don’t provide us with useful information. In addition, secondary emotions are problematic in that they interfere with us getting information from our primary emotional responses and acting on those emotions in healthy ways. Instead, they simply tell us that we aren’t willing to have our valid, primary emotional responses. As a result, they often lead us to try to avoid our emotions.

Where Do Secondary Emotions Come From?

Secondary emotions can come from a number of places. As stated earlier, we may learn from an early age that it is not OK to express certain emotions. For example, many men are brought up to believe that they should not feel anxious or sad because this is a supposed sign of weakness. Similarly, women are often brought up to believe that it is not appropriate to experience and express anger. As a result, when men and women brought up around these beliefs feel these emotions, they may begin to feel ashamed or embarrassed.

People with PTSD may begin to connect the experience of certain emotions with traumatic memories or thoughts (because these experiences often occur together). As a result, they may begin to fear the experience of fear or anxiety. Of course, this only increases the severity of a person’s fear, potentially leading to unhealthy attempts to escape that emotion (through drug or alcohol use, for example).

What Can Be Done?

The first step in reducing your secondary emotional responses is to increase your awareness of your emotions. This can be done through self-monitoring exercises. In these exercises, identify your emotional responses to a situation, as well as how you evaluate those emotional responses. Try to capture what kind of thoughts your primary emotions bring about, as well as how you feel as a result of those thoughts.

Next, practice responding to your thoughts in a different way. You can challenge your thoughts or be more mindful of your thoughts. That is, practice not taking your thoughts at face value or as truth, but simply as a thought you are having only because you have had that thought before — it is a habit.

Practicing these steps will help prevent the occurrence of secondary emotions and increase the extent to which you can get in touch with your primary emotional experiences.

By Matthew Tull, Phd

Increasing Emotional Awareness

Written by Dr. Matthew Tull ….conducts research on anxiety disorders (specifically PTSD) and substance use problems. He has published extensively in these areas and is the recipient of grant funding from the National Institute of Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Levels of Emotional Awareness

Your awareness of any given emotion falls on a spectrum ranging from no awareness to complete awareness. Drs. Lane and Schwartz have divided this spectrum into six separate levels of increasing emotional awareness. These six levels are describe below:

1. No Emotional Awareness: At this level, a person has no idea what they are feeling or that an emotion is even present. For example, a person may say that they “feel like a loser.” However, this is not really an emotional state, but instead, an evaluation or judgment.
2. Awareness of Bodily Sensations: Here, a person has some awareness of their emotions. However, they may only be aware of bodily sensations that they are experiencing, such as increased heart rate or muscle tension.
3. Awareness of Behaviors: At this level of emotional awareness, a person is only aware of how they would like to act as a result of having some kind of emotion. For example, a person may say that they feel like they would like to leave a situation as quickly as possible (which may be an indication of fear or anxiety), or that they feel as though they could yell at someone (an indication of anger).
4. Awareness that an Emotional State Is Present: At this stage, a person is aware that an emotion is present; however, they may have a hard time figuring out exactly what emotion is there. For instance, a person may have enough awareness to know that they feel “bad” or “overwhelmed” but nothing more specific than that. This is sometimes referred to as an undifferentiated emotional state.
5. Differentiated Emotional Awareness: We are now getting to the top levels of emotional awareness. At this level, a person is aware of discrete emotions that are present. A person is able to identify the emotion that they are experiencing at any given point in time, such as sadness, anger, fear, anxiety, happiness, joy, or excitement.
6. Blended Emotional Awareness: This is the top level of emotional awareness. At this level, a person is aware of multiple emotions that are present at the same time, including emotions that may on the surface appear to be in opposition to one another (for example, sadness and happiness). For example, a mother seeing her child go off to school for the first time may be very happy to see her child reaching this milestone but also sad to see that her child is growing up so quickly.

Increasing Your Emotional Awareness

There are a number of ways of increasing your emotional awareness. First, it can be important to increase your knowledge of emotions. For example, what is the purpose of an emotion? What function do they serve? What makes up different emotions? Learn more about how to identify your emotions.

Once you feel as though you have a good understanding of what emotions are, the best way to increase your emotional awareness is through monitoring your emotions. Here are some ideas on how you can start monitoring your emotions

Remember, as with any skill, increasing your emotional awareness may take some time and hard work. However, even if you can’t identify everything you are feeling, you can use the information you have to better figure out the emotion you are experiencing. For example, if you know that your heart is racing and you have thoughts that something bad might happen, chances are you are experiencing anxiety or fear because these are common experiences associated with anxiety and fear.

The more we know about the all the different experiences and feelings that make up an emotion, the better able we will be in moving up the emotional awareness ladder. Practice monitoring your emotions to increase your emotional awareness. Good emotional awareness can provide a solid foundation for other coping skills.

The Mask You Live In

The Representation Project

An exploration of American masculinity

15 styles of distorted thinking ….core spiritualiy for your discernment

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/141159769542274518/

Emomtional Issues Worksheets

Exercise: Is emotion control working?

 

 

Spend a few minutes thinking about an issue you’ve struggled with for a long time (it could be something that you struggle with all the time or something that just keeps coming back up again and again). It might be about your health, maybe your family / friends, or work. Also write down how long you have been struggling with this. Write about this situation on the lines provided below. If you need more space, use another piece of paper:

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

If you haven’t already, write about the emotions that occur in this situation that you find are difficult or distressing (i.e., sadness, anger, hurt, anxiety, fear).

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

What are some common thoughts that show up when you think about this situation? What emotions do you experience when you think these thoughts? It may be one thought or several thoughts that reoccur (i.e., I can’t handle / stand this? Why is this happening to me? I’m a failure. Nothing goes right for me? What if I don’t get passed this? etc.)

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The six step worksheet: Discovering the power of giving up emotion control

 

• Step 1. Please complete the worksheet below in the following steps. First,   think about all the strategies that you have used to try control / get rid of / or fix the distress (difficult emotions and thoughts) that you experience as a result of this situation.  In the column on the left below, identify all of these strategies. Make sure not to write anything in the right-hand columns yet. We’ll be using that column for something else.

 

If you have trouble identifying some of the things that you have done to reduce, or get rid of, the thoughts and feelings you have, think about some of the things that you have seen / heard other people do, and write those in the columns above. For example, some people might drink or take drugs to make themselves feel better. Some people procrastinate or avoid doing something. Others try to reduce their interpersonal distress by avoiding people. They might even avoid a loved one.

 

Step 2. When you take a close look, you may notice that some of the things you do to try to get rid of your distress don’t work at all. Go back and look at what you wrote down under “Strategies”, above, and put a checkmark by those strategies you believe don’t help at all under “Doesn’t Help”.

 

 

Step 3:  One of the toughest things about being human is that we love getting benefits in the short term. That is, if we do something that pays off at least a little in the short term, we continue to do it—even if it doesn’t help in the long run or even makes things worse over time.  For each strategy you listed above, put a check-mark (under “Short-Term”) by those you believe work at least a little over the short-term. 

 

• Step 4: Next, put a check-mark by those strategies you believe have lessened or gotten rid of that distress over the long-term.

 

• Step 5. Some of the things we do to manage our distress are physically harmful to ourselves or others. Put a check mark by those strategies you believe to be physically harmful to you or others under “Harmful”.

 

• Step 6: Finally, some of the things we do to manage our distress move us further away from things that are important to us, from things that we value. They cost us, because our lives become less vital, meaningful,  and purposeful as a result. Put a check mark by those strategies you believe move you farther away from the relationships and things that are truly important to you.

 

If you are like most people, you probably noticed that most—if not all—of the strategies you’ve used to try and manage this problem aren’t working, especially over the long run. Some of the strategies you’ve listed may work for smaller problems, for things that don’t matter so much. But for big issues (like this one) that matter, you may be seeing that they just don’t work. If you’ve discovered that some of your strategies are working over the long term, ask yourself the following questions for each of them: Has this distress gone once and for all?   

 

 

 

 

 

Worksheet: Identifying the strategies that take me away from what I most value

 

	Place a check in the box if the statement is true for you
1. Identify strategies you have used to avoid unpleasant feelings, or to make yourself feel better	2. The strategy does not work	3. The strategy works in the short term	4. The strategy works in the long-term	5. This strategy can be harmful to myself and/or others	6. This strategy has cost me something. It has sometimes moved me away from what I value.

We are not trying to make you feel hopeless about your life, here. In fact, this whole program is about helping you get more of the things that really matter to you in your life—more meaning, more purpose, and more aliveness. All of us have wanted more of these things all our lives. For most of us, life often becomes more about trying to avoid distress rather than trying to live life according to what matters to us. That is why it is important to take a long, honest look at what you do when you are distressed. Maybe some things are working. Maybe some things are not working.  The distress still lingers, or comes and goes—and meanwhile, your life is not getting any more meaningful or vital. It’s like getting your car deeply stuck in the mud. You keep pressing on the accelerator, thinking that will get you out of the mess you’re in. Meanwhile, the wheels keep spinning—and you’re still in the mud.

 

Take a few minutes to reflect on the chart you’ve just made above. Does your experience tell you that trying to get rid of distress  hasn’t worked? If it hasn’t worked after all this time, why would it start working now? There’s an old saying: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got”. And again, we’re not suggesting that you are hopeless or your life is hopeless—just that trying to banish tough feelings and thoughts when they show up is hopeless. We often think that things will “get better” when we are in CONTROL of our thoughts and feelings. We wait and wait. Years go by and we are still not in contro. What if we didn’t have to wait? What if we could live well now – with our thoughts and feelings?

 

 

In the next section we look at how the struggle to CONTROL our thoughts and feelings can keep us so occupied that we get too busy struggling to live well.

 

 

for those who do not have issues!

 

Hints for those among us “Who Have No Issues”

 

Abandonment, Abundance, Acknowledgement,

 

Addictions, Aggression, Aging, Agoraphobia,

 

AIDS, Alcohol Abuse,

 

Aliveness, Ambivalence, Anesthetize, Anger, Anorexia, Anxiety,

 

Apologetic, Appearance, Approval, Argumentative, Arrogance,

 

Arthritis, Attack, Attention

 

Deficit,

 

Authenticity, Authority, Availability, Avoidance, Back Pain, Balance, Baldness,

 

Beauty, Behavior,

 

Binging and Purging, Bitterness, Blame, Blockages, Body, Bondage,

 

Boredom,

 

Boss, Breathing, Bulimia, Bully, Burdened, Burnout, Cancer, Career Problems,

 

Caring, Cause and Effect, Chaos, Choice,

 

Codependency, Commitment, Communication,

Compassion,

 

Compulsions, Condemnation, Conflict, Confusion, Connectedness, Conscious,

Consideration, Control, Correction, Courageous, Creativity, Crime,

 

Crisis, Critic, Curiosity,

Death,

 

Debt, Decay, Decisions, Defensiveness, Degeneration, Degradation, Denial, Dependent,

Depression,

 

Difficulties, Disapproval, Disassociated, Discipline, Disconnected, Disease,

Disempowered, Dishonest, Dissatisfaction, Distraction, Distrust,

 

Divorce Problems, Doubt,

 

Drinking, Drug Abuse, Eating Disorders,

 

Ectopy, Emotionally Available, Emotions, Empathy,

Empowered, Enemies, Entropy,

 

Envy, Error, Eternity, Excuses, Exhaustion, Expectations,

Fabricate,

 

Failure, Fairness, Faith, Family Problems, Fatigue, Fault, Fear, Feedback, Feelings,

Fidelity, Flexibility, Focus, Forgiveness, Fragmented, Freedom,

 

Frigidity, Frustration,

 

Gambling,

 

Gentleness, Gluttony, Gossiping, Gratitude, Greed, Grief, Guilt, Happiness,

 

Headaches,

 

Healing, Health Problems, Heart Disease, Heartburn, Helplessness, Holding

Breath, Honesty, Horror, Hostility, Humility,

 

Identity Troubles, Ignored, Impotence,

 

Inconsiderate, Infantile Demands, Infidelity,

 

Inflexibility, Inpatient, Insane, Insecurity,

 

Insensitivity, Insomnia,

 

Inspiration, Intellectualizing, Internet Addiction, Intimacy,

Intimidation,

 

Intolerance, Invisible, Irrelevant, Irresponsible, Isolation, Jealousy, Job

 

Dissatisfaction, Job Stress,

 

Joy, Judgment, Junk Food, Justification, Lack, Laziness, Learning,

Leaving, Liberty, Life, Listen, Loser,

 

Loss, Love, Low Self Esteem, Lust, Lying, Malfunction,

Manipulating,

 

Marital Problems, Master, Migraines, Money Problems, Motivation, My Way,

 

Negativity, Nervousness, Nicotine Addiction, Nightmares,

 

Noise, Nurturing, Obesity,

 

Obsessions,

 

Openness, Opinion, Order, Over Eating, Over Spending, Ownership, Pain, Panic,

 

Participation, Passion, Patience, Patronizing,

 

Perfectionism, Personal Power, Phobias, Physical,

Planning,

 

PMS, Pornography Addiction, Poverty, Power, Power Person, Principles,

 

Problems, Procrastination,

 

Profit, Projection, Psychosis, PTSD, Punishment, Purpose, Rage,

 

Rationalization, Recognition,

 

Regrets, Relationship Problems, Resentment, Resonance,

Responsibility,

 

Rigidity, Running Away, Sabotage, Sadness, Safety, Sanity, Sarcasm, Satiation,

Satisfaction,

 

Scarcity, Screaming, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Self Control, Self Doubt, Self

Esteem, Self Exposure,

 

Self Hatred, Self Injury, Self Motivation, Self Righteous, Self

Sabotage, Sensitive, Serenity, Service, Servitude,

 

Sex Addiction, Sexual Dysfunction, Shame,

 

Sharing, Shut-down,

 

Shyness, Silence, Sleep Disorders, Smokeless Tobacco Addiction,

 

Smoking,

 

Sophistry, Sorrow, Sorry, Source Esteem, Speech Disorders, Spontaneity, Stage

 

Fright,

 

Standards, Stories, Strength, Stress, Strife, Struggle, Study Problems, Stuttering,

 

Substance Abuse,

 

Super Vigilant, Superiority, Support, Suppression, Sympathetic,

Symptomatic, Taker, Tantrum, Teasing,

 

Temper Tantrums, Tension, Terror, Theft, Threat,

 

Tobacco Addiction,

 

Tolerance, Toxicity, Trauma, Trust, Truth, Turmoil, Ulcers, Unconscious,

 

Unemployment,

 

Unfairness, Unhappiness, Unwillingness, Upsets, Victimhood, Violation,

Weakness,

 

Weight Problems, Whole, Willingness, Winner, Withdrawal, Withholding, Work,

 

Worry,

 

Yelling, Youthing

http://www.whyagain.com/worksheets.php

 

Michael Jackson Earth Song

still one of my all time favorites. talk about issues!

Issues!…………………….core spirituality…………..for your discernment

 

The thing that is at issue is the most important aspect of a subject! When a person has an issue with something or someone usually that indicates a problem with dealing with something. As in taking issue with someone or something by disagreeing.  Then there are those that make an issue out of something or someone and act as if it is important, which it may be to them, but may not be to another.

Now the awareness of issues has gained a quantum level of understanding when it comes to our larger human family. The subject of issues have become common language heard in the media and between people who are cultivating a self awareness, an important topics people are thinking about, talking about.

We can distance ourselves enough to take a look at something and discuss things, learning to be objective when we call something as issue. For those who have not developed the self awareness of issues there is an enmeshment with the issue. And often people become annoyed, hurt or reactive when an issue is even brought to their attention.

I see people reacting all over the place to their issues.

Are issues really problems? Well yes… when we consider that an issue is, like a problem, something that is difficult to understand or a feeling of not liking something or not liking to do something.

Questions that arise that are perplexing or distressing are actually obstacles to our universal awareness of the intrinsic nature of existence. Solving them personally and collectively contribute to our innate senses of wholeness. Until we resolve our issues we are fractured and un-whole and separate from one another. Our understanding of one another incomplete.

And conflicts are perpetrated. ( this is going on in my family of origin right now for example!)

Sometimes this goes on for centuries. Sometimes only a few minutes. Today almost everyone will bring up an issue of theirs or be triggered by their issue ….  sometime during their 24 hour day.

Disagreements and controversy are prime movers of human energies. As we take them apart and look at them we learn a great deal about ourselves, each-other and life in general.

Lets see what  issues we are learning about these days to name just a few:

personal issues

public issues

health issues

legal issues

emotional issues

family issues

racial issues

gender issues

money issues

authority issues

social issues

parental issues

religious issues

political issues

ethical issues

aging issues

weight issues

memory issues

shopping issues

eating issues

drinking issues

anger issues

time issues

power issues

spending issues

eco systems issues

planetary issues

poverty issues

drug issues

logistics issues

truth issues

reality issues

after-life issues

moral issues

educational issues

consumption issues

recycling issues

work out issues

sleeping issues

love issues

Our society is developing a vast array of issue- names for all the unfinished business of being human. We all have a lot to do here.

We are very busy.

Many of us are truly doing our best. We are solving many of our problems by owning our issues and then creatively learning how to find acceptable answers.

However one of the deepest obstacles to issues in general is NOT OWNING THE ISSUE!  When we fail to surrender to the knowledge of our issues one of the most lingering effects IS HUMAN SUFFERING.  Thus the first step in finding an answer is the owning of the issue, the problem. It is the very thing that will redirect one’s attention toward new possibilities and future solutions.

Issues are painful and thus humans do retreat from owning their issues. This can happen many times. This will assure the issue will stay, be in your face, and not go away. Ignoring, denying, twisting issues will force them to keep coming up and interfering in our happiness. Passing issues off  to one another without facing them will also prolong the agonies. I know because I have done all these things myself over the years. The only way to “make it go away “ is to own those issues and FACE THEM !

Every time an issue comes up for me I have learned instead of complaining and lamenting ( as too often goes on here on this planet for my taste, i.e. face book posts!) I see these as opportunities. In fact that an ISSUE  arises informs me that it is time to deal with the issue. When the issues keep coming, I know they have many components and I must develop a kind of vigilance to them.   How many times have I solved an issue on one level within me and it shows up again? This time needing to be addressed from another place inside me. Many times the issues repeat over and over simply because I have refused to own them completely.

Yes! Completely!

How  do I know this? Because they arise again.

I have learned issues stop bothering me when I have owned them completely, taken full responsibility for my part. Full responsibility for my own thoughts, feelings, actions, reactions. Always I find myself changing my stand on issues once I have completely taken ownership, and processed everything that arises inside me. There then comes a neutrality, or peace. I find this amazing! And so it goes that changing my stand is really UNDERSTANING!

We transform our consciousness, our relationships, and our world thru the inner work we do as it pertains to our own issues.

“Every issue is a learning module in your classroom of earth life, that you are even born to deal with and face and resolve your issues is a significant part of each person’s divine plan. No it is not all about how comfortable you are, or how you look or how much money you can draw towards your self, it is about how you handle the issues that arise in you and around you. Every major religion on earth speaks to this in some way. So when an issue arises for you…………hesitate for a moment, breathe, and notice your body reacting, take inventory inside you. Pay attention to all your emotions and thoughts, watch as your own consciousness brings up the mental pictures. All of this is the stuff of living. How you will do this is for each of you to decide. Do you wish to suffer more? Or will you choose to make peace? Make peace within yourself to your own issues as you get triggered by them. Your need for much of your pain medications, and all your diversions only prolong the agonies.

Your incompleteness is your path to wholeness, honor that in yourself and one another.

The design of life is to identify yourselves as you resolve the issues into wholeness, not identify yourselves thru your issues, in incompleteness!”

Core of spirit within me shares so gently today

shared with aloha

Snatam Kaur Bendicion de tu madre

Retoño mio, esta es la bendición de tu madre.
Oh my child this is your mother’s blessing.

Nunca olvides a Dios, ni un momento
May you never forget God, even for a moment

Adorando, por siempre, al Señor del Universo
Worshipping forever the Lord of the universe.

Recordando a Dios, todos los errores son purificados.
Remembering God, all mistakes are washed away.

Y todos nuestros ancestros son acogidos y salvados.
And one’s ancestors are redeemed and saved.

Siempre canta el nombre de Dios, Har Har
Always chant God’s Name, Har Har

Dios esta en tu interior, Dios es infinito.
God is inside you, God is Infinite.

Que el Verdadero Guru te sea amable
May the True Guru be kind to you

Que ames estar en compañía de santos.
May you love to be with the Saints.

Que tu prenda de vestir sea la protección de Dios
May your clothing be the protection of God

Que tu sustento sea el canto de la alabanza de Dios.
May your food be the singing of God’s Praise.

Bebe el néctar del nombre de Dios, y vive una larga vida
Drink the nectar of God’s Name and live long

Que la meditación en Dios te traiga dicha incesante
May meditation on God bring you endless bliss.

Que el amor sea tuyo propio y tus deseos se cumplan
May love be yours and your hopes fulfilled

Que la preocupación nunca te consuma.
May you never be worn by worry.

Haz de tu mente el abejorro
Let this mind of yours be the bumble bee

Y que los pies de loto de Dios sean la flor.
And let the Lotus Feet of God be the flower.

Oh sirviente Nanak, ata tu mente de esta manera
Oh Servant Nanak, link your mind in this way

Como el gavilán encuentra la gota de lluvia, y prospera.
Like the sparrow hawk finding a raindrop, blossom forth.

Snatam Kaur “We Are One” (Cantos para el Alma)

Ek Ong Kaar
(One Universal Creator God)
Satnaam
(True is his name)
Karta-Purakh
(Creative Being Personified)
Nirbhao
(No Fear)
Nirvair
(No Hatred)

Snatam Kaur – Earth Prayer – The Official Music Video

Snatam Kaur has released her first music video for the song Earth’s Prayer from her new album Ras. Inspired by her deep love and sense of responsibility for the environment, Snatam says, “My intention for this song and this video is that it will help all of us awaken to our role as stewards of the planet.” Directed and photographed by Robin Layton with music produced by Thomas Barquee.

Awake ( live performance)

letting song lift us up is such a gift in this lifetime. …keep me awake to memorize you…. such beautiful words.

The human neck and throat………………… core spirituality………. for your discernment

In the full body massage the human neck and throat area is usually the most  hardened area I have found in my 35 years of bodywork and massage sessions.

Why is this?

I would like to share my thoughts on this after giving thousands and thousands of treatments in my lifetime specifically to this region of the body.

First of all there is a head weighing significant pounds on top of the neck, we use this constantly while we are awake. Next there are the arms and hands that we almost use all day as well. Purely from a gravitational standpoint these two factors are high on the list for why we commonly all have such tight musculature in this region. We  usually move or sit and stand in upright positions with gravity pulling down on us. This force of gravity appears to go against the upright posturing of our bodies. Thus there is a dynamic tension here. I consider these factors anytime I am involved in doing “neck-work” in my practice. However there is more to the story.

Hard, stiff, tight necks are possibly the most universal areas of the body I find in human beings approaching me for bodywork and massage. I would estimate that out of 200 people I might find one individual with a relatively balanced layering of the musculature thru all the layers.

It is very rare.

I have learned to be successful in my work by realizing the capacity to provide a comprehensive level of “neck-work” to each session. Having said that I have discovered the responses in clients having received  neck massage is universal. Everyone remarks “ahaaaaaaaa” or “ooooooh” along with other pleasure able sounds and expressions of relief, gratitude, and deep samadhi feelings.

The relaxation on the face is universal, the quieting of the mind… almost a guarantee! The rush of fresh oxygenated blood to the head is remarkable and leaves most individuals with a rosy pink complexion. I have seen these responses so many times I find this worthy of this discussion.

Among the many aspects of the design of the neck one especially important is the area of our voice! ( see yesterday’s post on the voice). The area of our throat containing our  voice is almost completely housed inside a marvelous layering of musculature.

The musculature of the neck provides a stabilizing base to the throat and larynx, or our voice box as it commonly referred!

I have sat at the head of human beings softly holding their necks, very quietly, silently sensing and feeling the tensions held in this area.

What I see and feel has been astounding to me thru the years so much so I have initiated questions and dialogues with the clients either during or after to verify my own findings and what I have learned is, to me, amazing!

First what I actually have felt are things like this; stiff rigid muscles that are hard like pieces of wood. Inability to, or I think, “unconscious unwillingness” to fully rotate or move in the way the actual area is designed. deep unconscious tension, usually the client has no idea as to how or why it is there!

After softening the outer larger muscles there are deeper internal ones, very close to the spine that are so hard that they feel as if they are bones!

There are small muscles so full of rigidity that they are in  a  constant state of  diminished oxygen levels. They accumulate toxins and they harden. There is rigidity, numbness, burning, and achy-ness deep in there.

These body sensations I feel, are not there randomly or without a cause. I know this because I have learned to pay attention to the inner imagery I often see as I silently hold this place. Waiting as I do, to learn what I can in each session from the body before me. And I have seen incredible scenarios rise up into my awareness of pictures from the client’s life. These pictures relate to the stresses stored inside the body. This is a kind of intuitive, inner seeing and informing. I know this because of the countless times I felt prompted to dialogue with the clients.

In this way I have been able to ascertain the verity of the imagery rising into my awareness. There is an  imagery I find over and over in this experience. Here are words that describe the universal experience I find;

controls…. controlling or being controlled,

communication stops,

with holding of sound and words,

painful expressions with other individuals,

limits of all kinds that result from withheld self expressions.

I find certain lifestyles repeatedly in all this for example, women ( it seems the historical oppression of the voice of a female body),young parents, attorneys,teachers, individuals who command authority good or bad.

What I am attempting to share here is that I find the neck and throat area is being  compromised as we learn to communicate or not communicate, and  is directly connected to  stresses in the neck.

I have watched the messaging inside me show me patterns….the human dynamics of our  growing edges … releasing controls and learning to put into words, the deepest most important feelings we are struggling to voice as human beings over and over.

When you don’t say your truth your body holds this inside you and that with-holding utilizes  a dynamic form of  your internal personal power source… and that is held as a tension in your neck and ultimately in corresponding organ systems! (vague aches in the body, reappearing headaches, stomach aches, confusions, and low energy levels)

Conversely I have witnessed countless times that upon releasing these “control mechanisms” in the neck, people spontaneously tearing,  tears start to drop down the sides of their faces.

I have listened to words of inner truthfulness that had to be spoken immediately as the person receives a big AHAA!  I have listened to the sincere confessions of so many individuals spontaneously arise. So many! Releasing the tissues inside the neck and at the base of the skull will automatically start a process of unwinding that is more than just muscles here!

I have watched this unwinding begin as the jaw spontaneously starts to move, to open, to shift from side to side. The breath deepens and the person gets unlocked from something they have been holding. To me it is almost magical to witness. I have watched a more real self inside a person surface as this happens…. and I feel wonder at their presence emerging. What I am seeing is so much more here, so much more present, so  beautiful. The transformations are remarkable!

“John, so many are the mysteries inside each of you awaiting your discovery. All the unanswered questions of your life are within you. As you learn to unlock the experience of your spirit in a human body you learn that  your capacity to express your self, to realize your voice or not to realize your voice has real physical consequence.

That Source within you seeks to express thru  you as you. That with-holding can cause you additional harm and prevent the ever present, unceasing flow of revelatory consciousness you need to  navigate the realms of relationship you find yourselves a part of . Universally, human feelings of imprisonment arise out of this. Were you to understand you must communicate to free yourselves you would ease massive amounts of old outdated memories of  human suffering stuck inside your bodies, inside your very genealogy. “

Core of spirit within me speaks this day

shared with aloha