This video is about mindfulness. It will help you understand why it is both so useful and important.
To Desire Intensely Or Not?
I saw this question in a book that I am reading. I knew immediately it was time to write about desire. There are so many beliefs about this subject that need to be examined.
Desire is a driving force, no question about that. There is however, a wide range of opinions about the pluses and negatives of desire.
I have to admit to a big bias here –
Why Being Is More Powerful Than Doing
First a quick summary: You may have noticed that I often revisit ideas. I do that for several reasons:
1. I have discovered that my own journey towards self-realization benefits from looking at ideas and concepts from variety of perspectives. I suspect that is true for you.
2. Reminders seem very helpful in these times filled with such distractions. I am curious what you need to be reminded about as you move towards your highest expression? Please leave comments below.
3. I find that every time I read something I resonate with, I expand in my awareness; I open to a greater understanding. At this blog I explore timely issues for each of us on a path of awakening. What kinds of ideas resonate with you? Comments welcomed.
I hope you find this summary helpful and a good-lead-in to one of my favorite themes – Being and Doing.
How I Got Rid Of My Enemies, Wrote My Way To The Light And Was Filled With Blessings and Guidance.
This week I want to share several helpful perspectives, which may not seem related but I promise to tie them all together before this post is over.
Each one of these 5 points is worthy of a full post and they may receive that attention in the next few weeks. For now though, I will share these ideas so you can immediately explore what they have to offer:
1. There are no enemies. The only enemies are in your mind.
Six Life Changing Insights You Can Use Today
Over the last few months I have been sharing ideas with you that I find words inadequate in expressing. This writing challenge is tied to ongoing seismic shifting of my inner sense of self and the world.
At this point in my life I’ve committed to leaving a lifetime of programming behind. Now I am on a personal journey of deepening awareness, expanding compassion and realizing the highest levels of potential and expression.
Recently I’ve had a number of insights that have been very helpful. My hope is you can join me in exploring these higher levels of knowing.
My first insight is why joy matters.
Life Made Easy – Stop Then Go
Beyond the ordinary of daily life there is a vast reservoir of possibilities available to you. This potential sits quietly whispering with hope that you will do something special with your life.
Special, not in the standard way dictated by social norms, but in a way that screams look out, ready or not, here I come. With boldness you can be genuinely you and vibrantly alive in all that you do.
For too long you have been getting ready, haven’t you? I know I have. Reading, listening, watching, learning, always hoping the next knowing will leave the self-doubt behind. It never does, does it?
Well today is the day. Put your collection of notes aside. Fire the inner critic. Take no more classes. You have all you need inside. Truth be known, there is everything you will ever need to know available to you right now.
There are no secrets here; just doing what you know will work for you. Let’s call this practice - Life Made Easy and let’s begin with what you need to stop doing:
Six Essential Steps To Master The Art Of Receiving
Recently a reader of my blog left a wonderful comment about receiving and it stimulated a flow of ideas that I became very excited about. The excitement sprang from that fresh perspective and experiences his comment stirred in me.
As a result, I went to work journaling about how to be open to receiving. I use my journal to tap into my higher mind and the guidance from my soul. This is what came to me in bright flashes of insight:
Receiving Of Flow
Begins as an opening
With an opening, comes a trickle
That expands into a steady flow
Then a vibrant stream begins to stir
This over time becomes a powerful river
Along the way you remain open, receptive and grateful
Then you and the flow become one in an ocean of abundance
Why Your Truth Matters Most
Truth is what matters. It is what you and I are here in this lifetime to explore. And it is something we each have to find on our own. No one else can know what our truths are.
There are many institutions and organizations that have their opinions about what truth is. Religions, political parties, media, and science all claim to hold the truth.
But they cannot possible know what your truths are. It is not something told to you or found in reading sacred writings. It is an inner experience of awareness.
Your truth is unique to you. It’s most easily found by listening inward to the voice of your soul or higher nature. It’s your sense of inner knowing or it isn’t your truth.
Do You Want To Continue Your Story Or Move Toward A Larger Possibility
What do you tell yourself about who you are and what your life if about? That is your story. How does your story limit you?
Like computers, you have a set of basic programs that run your life. Many of your programs contain out-of-date stories that too often limit how well you function.
Much of your earliest programming needs serious upgrading. Yet you continue daily to replay that programming with your thoughts.
These programs can be upgraded to expand your life.
By the time we reach adulthood we have very deeply grooved programs about:
Here’s My Update On Life As A Big Experiment
My life has moved from a busy doing to a quiet being. I am now living a big experiment of “being” in my life as fully as I can.
Doing life means most days I did a job, exercise, ate, read, wrote, and repeated all this the next day. Life can become a habitual doing more on the level of surviving than thriving.
Being means each day is a new adventure, unplanned, unrehearsed, and unfolding. There is still eating, writing and practices for my well-being but those flow out of a way of life that is not programmed but simply experienced.
An inspirational friend of mind said that living life as an experiment is much more interesting. That made great sense to me but it has taken awhile to fully set this experiment up.
The conscious experiment of being fully in life has now been going on since moving to the Oregon Coast one and a half years ago. This way of being has opened me to a number of interesting discoveries. I want to share them with you because I think we can both learn from what they tell us about life.
Lessons from my life of being present:
Why You Were Born At This Time In History
There is a growing choir of voices that seems to be abuzz about the need for real change. If you have a questioning mind you most likely have joined this choir. Questioning is powerful because it provokes awareness in you.
With awareness you see beyond the surface. You see where old ideas and false beliefs get in the way. You understand the powerful role emotions play in directing the world and your life.
Presently the dominant paradigm is breaking down. The ego-mind based decisions, that for too long have dictated all our systems, are no longer sustainable. More expanded minds and hearts are called for to lead the way.
When 1% of the population collectively understands the need for real change, the ideas about that change begin to spread across the planet. We are presently beyond that 1%.
When 10% of us understand the need for real change, the ideas promoting change become unstoppable. We appear to be nearing that globally.
Writing Your Life Story Forward
Recently I promised you several tools to enhance 2013. The first tool is a plan to become the conscious author of your life story.
In November I experimented with writing a novel that included rewriting my past and writing my future. The experiment went very well. I have noticed that what I wrote for my future is already beginning to come into existence.
Experiences and inner sensations imagined in the writing of the novel are now in my life. I had a sense for what the next phase of my life would feel like. I now feel that.
As I was writing my recent story I also rewound some of the past by creating another view, a kind of bigger picture focused on the benefits of what I learned even in difficult times. The advantage of looking back is that you can usually gain a fresh and larger experience of what happened and what benefited you.
This process is one of creation. Since you are the creator of your life experience, why not consciously create the experiences you want to have. The heart and mind, your intentions and where you put your attention all are powerful factors of creation.
My offer to you is:
Why Now Matters More Than Any Other Time In Your Life
You Can Make 2013 Rock
Welcome to 2013. What lies ahead is unknown but one things is for certain - you will be the creators of your experience. Exciting isn’t it?
What matters to you?
What has purpose and passion for you?
What inner messages are waiting to guide you forward?
Who do you want to become over the next 36O plus days?
What are you committed to make happen this year?
How You Can Turn A Very Big Thought Into A Very Big Life
The big thought I had in mind for today is. “I am in the universe; the universe is in me.”
I am not sure where I first heard this idea. It might have been at a presentation by Deepak Chopra a few years ago. The idea that the universe is in me challenged my imagination to make sense of such an amazing possibility.
In my attempts to comprehend the vastness of this idea I explored visualizing the universe inside of me. These visualizations took me into very expansive places that filled me with energy and aliveness.
The best way to get a sense of what I am talking about is for you to have a similar experience. Here is the practice I use:
15 Powerful Paths For Human Expansion
December is near and so is the end of the year. All the talk and ideas about this being a great time of change has been interesting because speculation creates expectation and expectations feeds the collective mind to expand.
Can you feel the activation for change in you and around you? A kind of evolutionary call seems to be going across the planet.
Humanity appears to want to rise up and move to a richer more expanded expression.
· Can you feel the joy in your heart as it moves toward expansion?
· Have you sensed that you and many others are collectively tapping into this aptitude for compassion, for consciousness and for awakening?
· What other ways do you sense a call to further express who you are?
There are a number of ways or paths you can explore if you want to feed and grow your expansion.
Your Choice: Joy Or Suffering
Recently something became very clear to me. I have known this idea for many years but it has taken time for me to really understand the impact of this statement: We shape our experience of life moment-by-moment by our thinking.
We all have the opportunity to live a life of joy and happiness. It is a choice we make throughout each day. If joy is not the choice then the results often included suffering. Suffering is a product of our mind running us, not us running our mind.
The following is a summarization of the mental obstacles to living a joyous life:
What Is The Nature Of Your Mind?
When asked to tune into what is going on in the mind, most people listen for a minute or two and then let their thoughts take over.
In my work I often have people spend time becoming acquainted with what is going on in their mind. Most have difficulty because the mind can hardly sit still especially without practice.
What I have noticed in my own exploration is my thoughts are endless. Research states that people have approximately 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. You can do your own research.
Try sitting down for 15 minutes and noting down each time you have a thought. You will be surprised at how much is going on upstairs.
These thoughts represent a lifetime of programming. About 80-90% of the thoughts we have today are the same thoughts we have had over and over again. Imagine a powerful computer running the same script repeatedly. This is the nature of your mind – it keeps repeating itself.
Would this inner script shape your experience of life?
How I Expanded Into Vastness While Watching Ocean Waves Come and Go
I am very excited about the fresh perspective I have gained through my readings lately. One book particularly (Awakening In the West by J. Lumiere-Wins and L.M. Lumiere) shares some fascinating perspective from people like you and me having experiences of spiritual awakening.
I now better understand how we create freedom for ourselves so we can get out of our own way.
These stories of awakening have a common theme of non-dual awareness. Non-dual awareness is realizing that the nature of your mind and the Universe are non-dual, they are one. With this awareness you awaken to the infinite and eternal within you.
My favorite descriptive word so far about non-dual is “vastness.” The most inspirational understanding so far about the non-dual experience is one of stillness-wave-stillness.
Let me share why this all matters to you.
Where Is Your Soul Located And Does It Have An Email Address?
In the past few years or maybe it has been all my life, my soul has been trying to keep me heading in the right direction. You know us humans we are always going off course following some tangent of desire or tripping ourselves up with our thoughts.
The voice of the soul is a quiet one. It whispers wisdom for me to listen to or not. It can be in the form of an intuition, an inner guide, a flash of insight or inspiration or the knowing messages from an open heart.
How does your soul communicate with you? Do you listen?