Category: Spirituality

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Real Love

The idea of a thing, situation or person is often what is fallen prey to rather than experiencing the thing, situation or person itself.

We can see this especially at play in matters of love; in our lives, in our friends’ lives and in fictional characters on TV and in movies.  However, very little of what is offered actually leads up to us having an authentic experience of love.  It can be that when we grasp for what we think we want and fail to find it, we bring suffering to ourselves and to those around us.  We can feel that we’ve not found love, but something else…

Often the feelings of anxiousness, nervousness, and thrill in the area of love are actually romance, and not really love itself.  Romance can be a lot of fun as long as we don’t try to make too much out of it; if we do, it could become painful.  Romance may lead to love, but it can also fade without growing into anything more than flirtation.  If we cling to it and try to make it  more, we might pine for a fantasy or worse; find ourselves stuck in a situation that was never meant to last or be to begin with.

Real love is identifiable by how it makes us feel.  Love should feel good.  And its important to realize WHERE these feelings come from; from within ourselves – NOT from an outside source.  True love activates this.  Authentic love doesn’t ask us to appear in a certain manner, drive a certain car, live in a certain zip code.  When someone really loves you, their love for you awakens your love for yourself.  Its SO much deeper than just romance.  We realize that we have to trust ourselves, and not somebody else. They remind us that what we seek outside of ourselves is a mirror of what’s already inside of us.  Real love is empowering; reminding us that we always were, and always will be, completely enough just as we are.
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Gratitude

When we practice being thankful, we go through the process of counting our blessings, acknowledging the wonderful people, things and places that make up our reality. While it is fine to be grateful for the good fortune we have accumulated, true thankfulness stems from a powerful comprehension of the gift of simply being alive. When we feel it, we feel it regardless of our circumstances. In this deep state of gratitude, we recognize the purity of the experience of being, in and of itself, and our thankfulness is part and parcel of our awareness that we are one with this great mystery that is life.  

It is difficult for most of us to access this level of consciousness as we are very caught up in the ups and downs of our individual experiences in the world. The thing to remember about the world, though, is that it ebbs and flows, expands and contracts, gives and takes, and is by its very nature somewhat unreliable. If we only feel gratitude when it serves our desires, this is not true thankfulness. No one is exempt from the twists and turns of fate, which may, at any time, take the possessions, situations, and people we love away from us. Ironically, it is sometimes this kind of loss that awakens us to a thankfulness that goes deeper than just being grateful when things go our way. Illness and near-miss accidents can also serve as wake-up calls to the deeper realization that we are truly lucky to be alive.  

We do not have to wait to be shaken to experience this state of being truly thankful for our lives. Tuning in to our breath and making an effort to be fully present for a set period of time each day can do wonders for our ability to connect with true gratitude. We can also awaken ourselves with the intention to be more aware of the unconditional generosity of the life force that flows through us regardless of our circumstances.
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#thanksgiving #blessings #breath #gratitude #beherenow

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Sunday

Sunday evenings are my favorite.

It’s good to take a few minutes each day to unwind, but I include Sunday evenings to my daily unwind time.

Every culture uses something that pleases the senses to help in their prayer or meditation practices. Incense or some kind of fragrance is helpful, because it alone can set the tone of a room. And smells are one of the things that we remember and associate experiences with often. Lamps or candles are often used too; I prefer oil lamps because the flame is steadier than the flicker of a candle; inviting the witness to slow way down and come home for a little while.

Early on, I developed a way to learn by just observing. What to do, what not to do.. Observing is a way that I try to use to see things around me. Something that I learned about a long time ago has been coming up a lot for me lately; in all areas of life. It’s a statement that goes “People don’t see the world as it is, they see the world as they are”.

I see this showing up all over the place. Mostly between people. One of my favorite exercises to help slow down involves going into the woods and noticing how different all the trees are. And realising that we don’t judge the trees for being tall or short, straight or crooked, thick or thin. We just accept the trees for what they are and move on. We don’t get hung up on the fact that one tree might not have gotten enough sunlight and therefore grew a certain way, we just accept the tree for what it is and we move on.

I think that this is a practice that is desperately needed now with how we’re seeing each other. Chances are, we don’t know someone’s story and how they’re managing their life as a result of their story. All we see is how they’re managing their life.

I think we need to see people more like trees, and less like how we think they ought to be.

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A human being is part of the whole, called by us “universe”; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is kind of a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task MUST be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Not one of us sees life as it is, the world as it is. We all see life as WE are. We look at others through our own likes and dislikes, desires and interests. It is this separatist outlook that fragments life for us – man against woman, community against community, country against country. Yet, the mystics of all religions assure us on the strength of their own experience, if only we throw away this fragmenting instrument of observation, we shall see all life as an indivisible whole.

~ Albert Einstein

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Sit with it

Sit with it.

Instead of drinking it away, smoking it away, sleeping it away, eating it away, sexing it away, or running from it,

Sit with it.

Healing begins by feeling.

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Fire Ceremony

A practice that can be done at year’s end to help usher in the new and escort out the old is to take some time and write (hand write) down some things that you want to release and then burning the paper in a fire.

It can be as simple as a single word, or as complex as you need it to be. But spend time on it; at least a couple of hours. You can do this over several days, but don’t rush or skimp on your writing time.

Then on New Year’s Eve, you can light a fire. It can be a small fire bowl, a fire-pit, or your fireplace. Safely light a fire and sit with the fire for a few minutes’ time. Don’t rush this. Close your eyes and sit with your fire and what you want to release for a few minutes. See what you want release, see how much you want to move on from it. Then see the smoke rise in your mind as you release what you need to.

When you’re then ready, safely drop your paper(s) into your fire. See the paper burn up, and the smoke rise, releasing you. Anything that’s held you back, it’s time to let it go. .Allow yourself to experience whatever you will about this as your paper burns away; anger, fear, anxiousness, sadness, loss, gratitude. Let it all out like the rising smoke from the burnt paper.

Close with an affirmation. Close your eyes again and say goodbye to the past once and for all, and to whatever has been holding you back. See yourself in your new life without what you released. Feel the relief, like a weight finally off your shoulders. Take a deep breath and let the exhale extend, like the last bit of release.

It can be helpful to write out your new intentions, something on paper as a reminder to create your new life. Re-visit in three months to check your progress. And finally, re-visit next year to see how you’ve done.

Let’s all make 2021 our best and most free year yet.

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The Hero’s Journey

There is no such thing as a Hero’s Journey that doesn’t involve entering a dark thicket, battling savage beasts and facing your own despairs.

After all, the Kingdom can only be entrusted to someone who is willing to die for it. In order for any kind of growth to occur, you must be willing to kill off the part of you that is no longer serving you so that something new can grow in its place.

#growth #personalgrowth #evolution #evolve #herosjourney #josephcampbell

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Autumnal Equinox

A snail knows who he is and what he needs to do. Doesn’t have to question anything, his instructions and destiny are already programmed into his DNA.

People on the other hand, have the ability to discriminate; to choose this or that, consider outcomes, weigh consequences.

Today is an Equinox on the planet. At 3:50 in the morning today in the Northern Hemisphere, time was equal for a moment. But now in the North, the days will grow shorter and the nights longer. Generations ago, this season began the gathering work from the fields and gardens. Harvest. Stocking the cellars for the winter months, ensuring that enough exists. Preparing the outdoors and indoors for the forthcoming seasonal changes.

And internal preparation as well. For our interiors, the Equinox is about weighing and finding balances. What is useful, maybe meaningful and therefore kept, and what has served its purposed and needs to be released?

All this is a great reminder that time is not linear, but cyclical. With each day becoming more and more short, the hope of returning light happens; which is exactly what happens in the Southern Hemisphere, where days are getting longer, warmth returns, seedlings begin to sprout.

We enter and leave seasons just as nature does. It’s important to remember that things like Equinoxes support our internal questions of what is true and real for us. What is present, right now. And are we on a path that supports whatever that is for us?

Because our interior systems are synchronized with the heavens, times of year such as this and certain others offer a natural support mechanism for such interior inquires. Its a good thing to clear out clutter as one season leaves to make room for the next season coming in. This is a good time to ask yourself if you’re carrying around anything that needs to go.

A snail knows who he is. He doesn’t have to question anything; only where his next meal is coming from. We have the ability to look deeper at life, but only if we choose to be a little more conscious about it and less accidental.