awareness

The Super ABC’s Of Happiness

Over the last two years of living quietly, I have gained some valuable insights about happiness and I want to share them with you today.

As I started going through the alphabet I realized I had more than one idea for each of the letters. They all seemed valuable. What I want to give you is as many good ideas as I can come with. Hope that’s okay with you? Here’s the list:

Acceptance of Self – If you accept yourself as fully as you can, happiness will come easily. Loving yourself will set you free to love the world.

Awareness – Through awareness of who you are and what matters to you, you can create the life you want. Awareness makes your life a choice.

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.

The Never-Ending Experiences Of Life

I sensed a shift in a brief moment of awareness. In that moment I realized that experiences never end. They keep flowing through our lives and either we are aware of them or not.

If you take this moment now and expand your awareness you will see what I mean. Right now you are reading this and having responses to these words and ideas. There is the flow of energy in your body as you sit here. There are feelings activated by your thoughts.

You are a stream of experiences flowing through the now. If you pay attention, there are thoughts telling you what is going on and under those thoughts, just experiences. 

Your thoughts are you trying to make sense out of the moment. Your experiences don’t need understanding, they just happen.

These never ending experiences represent more of who you are then your thoughts.

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.

No More Holding Back

Do you ever hold yourself back? Most of us do. How do you get in your own way?  Let’s explore why that happens and what you can do about it.

It happens because throughout your life you are being programmed and much of that programming is false. Not only is it false but it goes unquestioned.

What this means is, you have false ideas and beliefs running your life all day, every day and you are not even aware that’s going on.

Are you ready for a healthier expression of you?

You are programmed to think that you:

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

I’m going to keep this very simple.

I have included a list of many of the possibilities that become available when you live fully in the present moment: 

Now is where all the action is.

Now is even more alive when it is appreciated.

Now offers pure pleasure.

How Walking In Peace Will Save You And The Planet

When we are able to take one step peacefully and happily, we are working for the cause of peace and happiness for the whole of humankind.” Thich Nhat Hahn

I want to invite you to join me and walk the Earth in peace.

I am sure you have noticed that the world seems uneasy. Each of us walking peacefully is needed. 

You can start by bringing awareness to your body as it moves. Notice your feet touching the floor or ground, feel your spine in action, be aware of your senses sensing. See what happens when you slow down enough to pay attention this way.

You can become mindful of your steps as you walk on the planet, as you approach work, as you move to your computer or reach for your phone, as you shop in the grocery store, as you enter into the room where someone you care about is, as you visit places in your community, as you go from room to room, and as you make your way towards your bed at night.

Each step you take shapes your experience.

You can walk peacefully when:

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?

Now Is Where Peace And Joy Reside

Each day is a new day. This moment is totally fresh if you don’t bring thoughts from the past or worries about tomorrow to clog it all up. In this moment you can create whatever experience you want.

You don’t have to be haunted by a past relationship, or something you felt you should have done better. This moment is free to be fully experienced as wonderful moment in your life.

Too often you can show up with a trail of regrets and disappoints and fill what could be amazing with what wasn’t. Have you ever done that? It doesn’t have to be that way.

You can let all that isn’t happening go. You can release the past hurts and regrets. If you don’t, you carry them with you. Then you miss out on what good things are happening because you are too busy with what went wrong.

Living moment by moment makes if possible to enjoy the gift of the present. The present is truly where:

Why I Kept Using Others To Find Self-Love

As I have grown older I have noticed a very thankful shift in my sense of self. I now can say that I truly love, accept and appreciate who I am. It wasn’t always that way.

Do you ever struggle with loving and accepting yourself?

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:

Are You Hooked on Distraction?

Do you ever come to the end of a day and wonder where your day went and why you didn’t get more done? Maybe you were distracted.  Consider this: Was your distraction self-induced?

By self-induced I mean you were doing things that spent the minutes of your day unconsciously. Examples could include time spent on: Facebook, Twitter, surfing the Web, playing video games, rehashing past dialogues, watching TV mindlessly, too much time viewing sports/movies/YouTube, stuck in the habit of worrying, and wasting time doing things that don’t matter to you.

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.

Novel Writing For Self-Realization

November is National Novel Writing Month. This is my third year participating in this adventure. The goal is to complete a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. My two previous novels sit here on my computer. One day I will self-publish the first one.

The second novel was a story that was fun to write but very personal. I noticed it stayed with me after I finished it. Traces of the story seem to become part of a greater reality for me.

As I began plans for this novel I decided to approach it in a unique way. I would use it to influence my mind - especially my unconscious mind in ways to heal my past, to invite new possibilities of experiences, to encourage the expansion of my consciousness and to assist me in growing my abilities to be present, be aware and be more self-realized.

The Possibilities In You Are Endless

How can you get out of your own way and remove the inner barriers to explore all that is possible?

What would your life be like if you allowed the following truths about you to become fully realized?

You are:

Pure awareness

A bright light

Unconditional, endless love

Infinite and eternal

No Me

Warning: Reading this can throw a wrench into how you view yourself and the world. 

I was standing around a fire with some friends as our weekly morning men’s group was coming to an end. We were offering intentions to the fire as is the tradition in the world of sacred fires. Fires of this nature are wonderful for releasing the past, and seeding intentions for the future. 

I joined in. I wish for safety and success for friends as they headed off to lead a shamanic journey to sacred sites in Mexico. I also offered intentions for the well-being of all on the planet and as I always do, for peace in the world.  When it came to personal intentions, I drew a blank and didn’t think much of it. 

As I was driving home this phrase came to me with resonating clarity, “No Me.

A Meeting With Awareness

Today was a very sunny day here at the coast, actually warm if you sat in the sun.  I decided to do an experiment in being aware in the moment. I hope this account of awareness might show you what you can notice by being fully present.

The noise of the ocean was present in waves of sound

My stomach talked to me about what I had for lunch

The warmth of the sun on my skin was comforting

I felt the chilled breeze off the Pacific as it surrounded me

There were moments of stillness and then thoughts coming and going

Crows always had something to say

The Possibilities In You Are Endless.

How can you get out of your own way and remove the inner barriers to explore all that is possible?

What would you life be like if you allowed the following truths about you to become fully realized?

You are:

Pure awareness

A bright light

Unconditional, endless love

Infinite and eternal

Pure presence

In unity with all of life

A soul having a human experience

Stillness and peace

Bliss waiting to be experienced

Joy and happiness

Grace waiting to be expressed

One with the Source

Free to be anything you want

One with beauty of nature

The expanding universe

Compassion for all

A difference maker

Acceptance and appreciation

How do you realize these true qualities of your nature as a human being?

Sit is stillness and be guided.