The Map and The Territory: Navigating the Journey Into Authenticity

What We Plan & What Happens

2011-06-01T18:17:00.000-07:00

I had intended to begin June with guest blogs - an eclectic mix of various links & such - but, here it is June 1st & I find myself somewhat unprepared...circumstances which amuse me. In appreciation of the power of unintended circumstances, I offer this teaching about intention:

"Most people think of intention as if it were about the future, as in the sense of something we plan to do or accomplish, a goal we intend to achieve, for example. When we use the term in this way, we perceive intention as a means for arriving at a future destination. By another definition, intention is more like a course of action we plan to execute to some future end. When we speak about intention as a spiritual principle, these interpretations of the word have the potential to cause a great deal of confusion.
It may surprise you to learn that, until recently, the word intention signified the importance of a thing, or that which gave a thing its meaning. We must keep this in mind when we think about intention. Intention as a spiritual principle, you see, is not about what we plan to do, or what we hope to get as a result of executing that plan. Intention is, instead, a measure of why such a plan might be important to us. When we view the concept from this perspective, we can begin to understand that intention has an indivisible relationship to essence, or the feeling experience we desire. In this relationship, the essence we hope to receive from achieving or having something, is fundamental to any intention. If we think of the spiritual principle of intention as a goal or a plan to have a certain thing manifest in a certain way at a certain time, then we have missed the point entirely." - Spotted Eagle

~ From the Spotted Eagle chat 'Intention' channeled by Jennie Marlow in February 2006

If you are interested in listening to the full one hour recording of this chat, let me know & I will arrange a downloadable link for you. The price is $10.00.

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid by William Stafford

2011-05-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

So, Wavy Gravy and Shakespeare walk into a bar...

2011-05-08T15:49:00.000-07:00

We're all bozos on the bus,

so we might as well sit back

and enjoy the ride.

- Wavy Gravy

In her terrific book 'Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow' author Elizabeth Lesser shares this quote from self-proclaimed clown-activist Wavy Gravy as she addresses the in-progress quality of being human and how important it is to maintain a sense of perspective and humor as we navigate the journeys of our lives.

Lesser writes: "It is wonderful to take your place on the bus with the other bozos. It may be the first step to enlightenment to understand with all of your brain cells that the other bus - that sleek bus with the cool people who know where they are going - is also filled with bozos: bozos in drag, bozos with secrets. When we see clearly that every single human being, regardless of fame or fortune or age or brains or beauty, shares the same ordinary foibles, a strange thing happens. We begin to cheer up, to loosen up, and we become as buoyant as those people we imagined on the other bus. As we rumble along the potholed road, lost as ever, through the valleys and over the hills, we find ourselves among friends. We sit back, and enjoy the ride."

A fool thinks himself to be wise,

but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

- William Shakespeare

Regardless of whether our temperaments tend to align more with Wavy Gravy or Shakespeare, each of these quotes relates to the common choice life offers us: do we dance with uncertainty and risk appearing foolish and vulnerable? or, do we pursue security and grant the mind and reason our ultimate authority? How do we sort out what so often appears to be an unresolvable situation? In the work I study and share, my teacher Spotted Eagle boils down our existential fears into three basic components or 'types', one of which serves as the primary incarnational focus for our life. These types are: Rejected / Emotional Security, Plane / Abandonment, and Body / Power. Each type is comprised of certain themes, the expression of which create both a context of resistance and an opportunity for resolution.

To slightly expand, the Rejected type tends to view life through a lens which states, “I must sacrifice for others so they will care about me when I am no longer able to take care of myself.” Their primary fears are about not having emotional security, and their resolution is through self-acceptance, learning to disengage with who and what does not serve them, and choosing close relationships with great care.

For the Plane type, “I must secure protection and resources in case the tribe wants to abandon me and leave me without support.” Their primary fears are of being without protection, and their resolution is through detachment, accepting that pain and loss are part of life, and learning to have a 'cosmic' perspective on life, death and change.

And for the Body type, “I must dominate the tribe and its resources in case they will not share with me.” Their primary fears are about domination, and their resolution is through humility, seeking a balance of power, seeking to be a part of something larger/higher, and contributing to the greater good for all.

Without any obligation whatsoever to 'do' anything at all about them, these three core fears and their complimentary fantasies form our starting points as we make our ways in life. As Wavy Gravy might reframe this: we either fear the other bozos on our bus might kick us off the bus / or we fantasize that we would be more valued with other, different traveling companions; we fear that our bus will break down along some lonely stretch of the road and we will succumb to the dangers of the environment / or we fantasize that life would be safer on another bus; or we fear that we are on a somehow structurally defective or sub-par bus / or we fantasize that we would be more powerful if we were on a more attractive bus or a newer model.

After such a light-hearted beginning to this post, are you now more angst-ridden than ever?

If so, may I suggest adding this accessory to your repertoire. No home (or bus) should be without one.

At least one.

The Transformation of Tribe

2011-05-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

“Rarely has humanity faced such a convergence of challenges to its survival and its spiritual integrity. The changes that are upon us will demand an unprecedented degree of emotional maturity and spiritual commitment. Those who choose to be in the vanguard, leading humanity through these changes, will shoulder an enormous responsibility for the way in which they support others in their search for wholeness during this great transformation." — Spotted Eagle

I recently participated in a workshop facilitated by my teacher Jennie Marlow on spiritual leadership which has inspired many inquiries into just what leadership and service means to me. One of the points made early on is how our common default perspectives on tribe and leadership tend to get filtered through the lens of our Stone Age based constructs around power, safety, and value. We see this show up often in the media (e.g. Dances With Wolves) and in many modern spiritual models (any number of contemporary intentional communities) which romanticize the notion of 'tribal' life. We imagine it as a simpler way of life, in tune with nature, and without the pressing financial, environmental, and political pressures with which we are currently dealing. If we accept this paradigm as our benchmark, we may take action to create our lives and communities based on a model that is, in my view, neither sustainable nor practical.

My teacher Spotted Eagle speaks to the evolution of consciousness at play in modern times in transitional terms when he observes that humanity is in a collective grieving process as we experience the loss of the illusion of material security. We are, generally speaking, not well-equipped culturally or emotionally to grieve in a healthy manner. We tip out of power when we interpret the essentially impermanent nature of life as an indicator that our security is under constant threat, and then we feel justified in acting out our existential issues - often with destructive consequences. Our minds eagerly coalesce around efforts to recreate the perception that our lives are under control; thus reinforcing the Stone Age model of dominance and subservience that is the foundation of this model. In living this way nothing can move forward for us because this approach is fundamentally a closed circuit.

So then, how can we evolve our behaviors and choices to reflect a healthier, more balanced, point of view? Spotted Eagle suggests that we can begin by shaking up our notion of what a tribe is and, in so doing, offer our minds a tribal model that is not about disempowering ourselves or one another. In order to accomplish this rather daunting proposal, it serves us to turn our attention toward creating communities which support the authenticity of its members. Our challenge is to evolve our awareness and the use of our energy in service of embracing uncertainty every step of the way. As I see it, only then can we experience fulfillment - both as individuals and as communities. Regardless of the context of our experience, our personal responsibility remains the same; to become aware of our issues and the patterns through which we act them out - and then to use our tools to shift those patterns into alignment with our spiritual values...our desire to experience essence.

What comes to mind when you think about tribes, about leadership?

To get your inquiry going, or to perhaps expand on what you've already been pondering, I offer this interview with one of my heroes, Seth Godin. Seth's work is highly visible on line and in print, so if this inspires you, I encourage to you explore more at the bookstore &/or on the web. I happen to be partial to this one because of its relative informal, conversational quality. I hope you like it:

Seth Godin on Why We Need a Tribe

Minding the Mind

2011-04-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

One thing I've noticed about myself is how ready I am to dismiss my mind as having anything at all to do with my quality of life. And yet, it is the mind that holds the ability to process data, perceive inspiration, retrieve and conceptualize information, to analyze options, and so forth. Mind can only do what it is designed to do - and that's all right. Depending upon how we're wired, our thinking is, generally speaking, more of a fixed or a fluid process - neither of which is any better or worse than the other. The trouble comes when we use our mental energy, in the form of its conditioning, as our authority for making important decisions. This point brings up a host of weighty questions, among which may include: How do we balance and integrate the basic functions of our mind's mental energy with the cultivation of spiritual awareness?; If some information is good, wouldn't more information be better?; Are there different kinds of intelligence?; What about learning?; Is 'mind' held exclusively in the brain or is it more diversified?, and so on. One of my favorite inquiries is, 'What is the difference between 'mind' and 'mindfulness'?

My teacher Spotted Eagle often speaks to the qualities of mind in terms of its biological nature, how its function is influenced by our emotional system, and then how it is expressed in our existential issues. He likes to say, "Never let the Mind go unsupervised!" What does he mean by this? One way to approach this concept is to notice that when we are employing mindfulness we direct our attention to the experience of essence as opposed to tethering it to a narrow craving for form and its illusion of security. A good place to begin a personal inquiry on these sometimes confusing matters is to recall something in the past that made you either excited or worried about the future.

"What was the picture that Mind painted about the future that made you feel excited or worried? What fantasy did this picture promise to deliver? What fear did this picture hope to resolve?

Which of the following qualities played a part in the story you imagined?

1. Money
2. Security
3. Prowess (or health)
4. Reputation
5. Sexual attractiveness
6. Power over others

What action did you take to make this future happen? What truths did you ignore in order to maintain your belief in this future? How did the excitement, and whatever action it prompted you to take medicate your fear? or fuel your fantasy?

This inquiry illustrates an important point: Mind puts its faith in the illusion of a future that can be avoided, made to happen, or forced into being. Mind prays for certain outcomes for itself and others. Mind puts its faith in action and in inaction; it puts its faith in the illusion of control. It seeks outcomes that medicate our fears and/or support our fantasies.

There is an oft-repeated Buddhist proverb about a man who came repeatedly to his teacher, asking for advice on all sorts of matters, especially about the difference between how his teacher experienced his life before enlightenment compared to after. The master’s answer was always the same: "Before enlightenment, 'Chop wood. Carry water.' After enlightenment, 'Chop wood. Carry water.'"

From this simple yet profound story we can notice that it is in the act of mindfulness; the observation of the self - what it thinks, what it perceives, how it behaves, and what it chooses - all of these things, especially when we are under pressure - that this is where the information we need is located and waiting for us to retrieve it." ~ Spotted Eagle

I would not call myself a Buddhist, although at times I do find its teachings can bring me wisdom that evolves my life and opens my heart. In the spirit of this then, I offer the following piece by Susan Piver on the hidden treasures of being which are held both within the natural world and within the human mind:

You are brilliant. I have proof.

"Happiness is Love. Full Stop." - Dr. George Vaillant

2011-04-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

At 56 the subject of aging is on my mind as never before. There's the personal and the transpersonal experience at play for me as it is for most of my peers. I was introduced* to a terrific video of an interview with Dr. George Vaillant who offers an inside look at an unprecedented seven-decade study of a group of Harvard men which suggests that one thing, above all, truly makes a difference.

If this sparks your curiosity and you have seven minutes:

Click HERE to Watch

* thank you Marilyn Berman

A Message to My Fellow Citizens of Stockholm

2011-04-20T17:17:00.000-07:00

The other day I saw a reference to the 'Stockholm Syndrome,' a somewhat archaic term used in psychology and the media which describes a seemingly contradictory phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness. I first became aware of this back in 1974 when the young heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, spent two months in captivity, and then actively took part in a bank robbery they were choreographing. This lead to her arrest and subsequent trial, with part of her legal defense strategy (which ultimately proved unsuccessful) being the argument that she had been at the affect of this syndrome and was therefore not responsible for her actions.

It set me wondering about how our minds so often function as the arbiters of our choices and behaviors in ways that, to put it ever so mildly, don't particularly serve us in a constructive manner. When we see ourselves as victims of our circumstances, life gets messy rather quickly, and most of us opt for acting out in one way or another in a misguided effort to set things straight. Doesn't it feel sometimes that our minds have taken our common sense, our clarity, our very curiosity hostage? And then, don't we often simply let that be - unquestioned, basking in the glow of our infatuation with our mental energy? The siren call of certainty can bring us into a trance state at the blink of an eye and before we know it our mental conditioning is running the show. So, I'm wondering, what part does curiosity play in the human spiritual experience?

Here's what my teacher Spotted Eagle has to say about it:

"What we can see about human animal nature is that, beyond physical survival, the mind needs to feel safe, valued, and powerful enough to resist domination. Until we overcome existential fear, we cannot move into self-actualization where our spiritual gifts can be fully employed to create what brings us essence. If the only tools you have are fear-based, then you will tend to perceive every problem as a control issue and your thinking will follow one of two tracks: either you will feel that there is nothing you can do to solve your problems and sink into despair. Or you will think there is something you must do to avoid what you fear and then start pushing energy. In either case, access to the creative principle of curiosity and its energies will be closed to you.

We must cultivate the humility to admit that we do not know the truth of any now until it emerges for us in that now. We cannot be in the now when we are burdened with either the hubris or the self‐deprecation of our decisions about reality. When we employ our curiosity, the first thing we must do is surrender control. We undecide what was once decided. We open ourselves to learning what may be emerging in the now that is outside the scope of our previous experience and perceptions.
Curiosity comes to us from two Latin roots, curiosus meaning “inquisitive” and cura meaning “careful.” What we possess when we are curious is the ability to inquire, and to do so with care and consideration. We learn, and then we let go of what we think we know so that we can remain open, undecided, and allowing our curiosity to continue leading our way. We are open to one very simple truth: that the Universe is vast, and what we think we know about it is actually a limitation for us both personally and creatively."

What happens, we might wonder, if we turn away from the opportunity to remain open? Again, from Spotted Eagle:

"Over the course of a lifetime of preventing what he fears, hiding from what threatens him, or chasing his excitement wave, the individual’s ability to create essence grinds gradually to a standstill. The will to create becomes exhausted, and the mind can see no way forward because what it has used as creative fuel— the emotional reaction—has drained the individual of his will to keep pushing energy. The mind can see clearly that there is no more will to create, and its fear of the uncertain future then becomes magnified. Because the fearful mind that has exhausted its will can see no way forward, it will then come to believe in the futility of its efforts, and this is when we begin to despair."

And, as counter-intuitive as that may sound, this can be good news because, for most of us, it's not until we are on our knees - often up to our necks in our stuff and despair - that it occurs to us to try something else...to reconnect with our curiosity and the willingness to undecide.

Full Moon Lessons

2011-04-19T13:43:00.000-07:00

I've been moving toward developing my skills in the art and craft of teaching...to take my seat as a teacher, as I recently heard it put so beautifully. I've been working on the fears and insecurities that come up for me as I make my way and I've noticed how debilitating it is for me as a student when material is presented to me from someone who is claiming in ways both direct and implied that they are the source of the knowledge they are delivering. What came roaring to the forefront of my inquiry was the horrifying thought that I could just as easily slip into this stance as a teacher if I allow my awareness of this point to be trumped by my egoic fears.

Last night as I was thinking about this, I was bathed in the lovely light of a full moon and it prompted me to reflect back upon the course Beyond Personal Magic from Jennie Marlow and her guides Spotted Eagle and Grandfather White Elk. In particular, I thought of the section on Illumination Magic, the creative principle of communication, and I'd like to share an excerpt of that with you in the hope that it may inspire you as it has me:

"Illumination Magic is the magic of the teacher, and every good teacher has a lot of skill in it. This is not surprising when you realize that the Illumination’s job is to shed light on truth for others, to light their way, to transmit to the community a clear and undistorted representation of spiritual truth.
You can learn much about this magic’s nature by studying the etymology of the word, illumination. This word comes to us from the Indo‐European word that produced the Greek and the Latin words for “light.” From the Latin lux, are derived such English words as luminous, luster, illustrate, lucid and lunar. It is from the last of these—lunar—we have our most intriguing window into Illumination Magic.

The Moon is a great reflector, the greatest reflector in our natural world. The amount of light it is able to reflect to us is a function of its position relative to the Sun and the Earth—the source of light and the location occupied by the community of mankind. In order to be powerful, Illumination Magics must live from the recognition that they are not the source of higher truth, but, instead, they are reflectors of that source. Depending upon the Illumination’s position, relative to the truth, the Illumination’s truth shines with illuminating strength, or his light it reflects only a small fraction of the truth because the full truth is shielded by his issues.

Communication that reflects source requires tremendous self‐honesty and responsibility for our emotional reactions. It demands of us impeccable accountability for our reality, and that we hold others impeccably accountable for theirs. We hold ourselves fully responsible for our perceptions, behavior, and choices, and we do the same for others, especially those we see as victims, that we withhold blame and outrage from those we perceive as perpetrators, and that we refrain from rescuing others from the consequences of their own behavior and choices. In this way, we can participate in the community of mankind without succumbing to the pressures of existential fear. We can reflect our courageous, loving, and devoted hearts in our communications with others, and not flinch from the truth out of fear of the repercussions. We can choose what to speak or not speak based, not on our issues, but on the choice to invest our energy in what serves.

We are human, and so we will think many out‐of‐power thoughts. We are human, and so we will believe many things that simply are not true. We are human, and so we will react emotionally to whatever appears to fulfill our existential fears. But we do not have to act out. We can see what is human reflected within ourselves. We can decline to act from the monkey‐mind’s reactions, and instead respond to the now moment with due consideration for what our spiritual nature would ask of us instead. When the emotional wave has been launched, we know to wait it out—to allow it to conclude—before acting or speaking. We resist the temptation to whip up the emotional waves of others with the drug of excitement or [fantasy]. We resist the temptation to trigger the fears of others in satisfaction of our own existential fears and judgments."

Follow the Leader?

2011-04-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

I recently participated in a workshop on Spiritual Leadership with my mentor Jennie Marlow in which we explored how our emotional and energetic systems function in terms of our personal and professional relationships and how employing those systems will lead us either to fulfillment or dissatisfaction. It seems clear to me that many of us are hungry for inspiration and practical tools for self-empowerment and coping with loss and the challenges of our times. I would like to share a quote from my teacher Spotted Eagle which, for me, addresses the fundamental quality of what spiritual leadership is all about:

"A spiritual leader is a person who assists others in finding fulfillment by demonstrating a way forward." ~ Spotted Eagle

Once again, simple, but not easy. Where do we even begin our inquiry on leadership at this level? It can feel overwhelming to bring our attention to the enormity of the challenges which lie ahead for humanity. We may want to contemplate these things, but all too often what may start out as a sincere desire to serve can devolve into moral outrage and soon we are chasing our own tails, unable to move forward.

Let's take a look at how social movements get going in the first place. Derek Sivers is best known as the founder of CD Baby, the largest seller of independent music on the web and he has some interesting insights to offer on the process of leadership. He points out that leaders are those among us who are willing to risk being different in public (key point!) and that they nurture their early followers as equals. As more followers come along, they tend to emulate the earlier followers which provides greater visibility and emotional security for all involved. As more join in, the risk of being different is reduced and a movement has been launched. Therefore, it's the first followers that actually create a movement. Whether any given movement grows into a sustainable form is up to its utility, and, to a great extent, the timing of things. But, whatever it is it has to start with someone, somewhere, at some point. Perhaps with you, here, and now?

Here's an interesting video by Derek Sivers on How to Start a Movement. May I just say now, that humor helps enormously. Enjoy:

How To Start a Movement

Keeping It Simple is Not Easy

2011-04-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

More and more as I make my way in life, I am guided to 'keep it simple.' As much as my heart resonates with this wisdom, my mental constructs take a different approach. In its longing for certainty and for credit, my mind efforts to fit its stories into what I refer to as my delegated 'column inches' of thought...the imposed borders of my willingness to be present with what is, to work with what's in front of me. The pressured editor in my head has a way of turning my attention away from the power of the evolving nature of the present moment and toward what it makes up about those moments in an all-out effort to medicate its fears of uncertainty as I judge my life through the lens of my existential issues.

It is to this dynamic that my teacher Spotted Eagle speaks when he says:

"There are overwhelming complexities in human interaction, and this is at the heart of our experience of life as we consider our circumstances and place them in context – a context that we can then reflect back to others in our words and actions.

Bluntly put, judgment is dishonest. It cannot be truthful because it is based on distorted and filtered awareness that is rooted in a decision about reality. Judgment says that we are the source of truth and that our decision about reality is what is true. When we indulge in judgment, we are like junkies fiending for a fix. What is our drug? It is the illusion of godlike power to pass judgment on ourselves and others. It is the powerful drug that says, “I know the whole truth!” It is that emotional heroin we call certainty. Certainty is a hard drug and it medicates our authentic pain. Authentic pain is responsible for itself, and [so we think] it is to be avoided at all costs. We blast the force of our emotional charge on our issues onto ourselves or others with a breath‐taking fury. Wrapped in the mantle of our martyred suffering, or riding on the wind with our fiery sword, we are burrowing into the underbelly of all that we decry about man’s inhumanity to man.

So, the question remains: How do we as humans—struggling against intense internal pressure to distort the truth—how do we discern the truth without judging it? How are we to be discriminating in our choices without being hypocritical? How do we stand in our spiritual truth without indulging in the kind of spiritual bigotry that insidiously holds us above those who we deem to be less conscious?

The human creative principle of communication holds the key. This is what informs us that what we see “out there” is really a reflection of existential fear, polarities, and issues that we are projecting onto reality. It tells us that we can witness the affect of this by observing human nature, and that by observing human nature, we can discern things about ourselves that are very difficult to admit. But perhaps, most importantly, when we make this admission, then and only then can we surrender our need to be the source and begin to reflect the true source, divinity as reflected in our own hearts."

Since the Subject is Fear

2011-04-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

Lucky for us, there are many opportunities to be in the presence of one of my favorite teachers, Pema Chodron. When I think of Pema, I often recall the comment someone once made when speaking of how it's quite common for those encountering Pema for the first time to have expectations of - right off the bat - getting a big hug from her. And then, their surprise at having her pierce their expectation with grace and wise fierceness.

Please enjoy this teaching from her:

Pema Chodron on Fear

It's Not About the Money: Shifting the Patterns in Your Finances

2011-04-04T13:51:00.000-07:00

As I am wrapping up my income tax preparations, I have money on my mind...the problems with it, the not enough of it, the where-did-it-all-go of it, the outrage that my taxes are helping to fund political policies I find to be abhorrent....and so on. Concurrently, I'm reading an interesting book by Geneen Roth called 'Lost and Found' which draws some very direct parallels with how we manage our finances and how we manage our lives. How we use our financial resources is in truth not separate from how we use any other resource; time and energy, for example. Most of us (me, included) tend to position our money issues outside of our awareness of the vast mid-range of variables regarding the ebb and flow of resources and their inherent cyclical nature. We tend to lock onto an all-or-nothing mind-set and go from there; often with very destructive results.

Roth refers to this as the 'what-the-hell' myth and writes:

"The what-the-hell myth comes from the mind that believes in black or white with no in-between. If we've blown it a little, we might as well blow it all the way. If we eat a bite, we might as well eat the entire thing. If we've bought a pair of shoes, we might as well buy the purse, the stockings, the skirt that goes with them. It's a mind-set left over from being children who haven't yet learned to hold the tension of opposites (or that the mommies they worship can also be mean and tired - and that that doesn't mean the end of the love as they've known it). In this black-or-white thinking, you're either good or you're bad, you're right or you're wrong. One wrong move and you're off the deep end."

My own inquiries on money matters brought me back to a lesson from my teacher Spotted Eagle on evolving our finances:

"It is important to notice where you have a habit of indulging in nonproductive tension: the tension between the outcome you fear and the outcome of your fantasies. With observation and a willingness to grow, you can make the shift to a different kind of tension, the one that will actually assist you in making a change: the tension between the essence, the feeling experience, you have now, and the essence you desire.

It is also important to notice that the emotional wave can block the experience of essence. This is quite obvious when we are talking about anger, fear, or confusion, but it is also true when we talk about excitement, which is an emotional reaction to the expectation that a fantasy for a future form will come true. When the wave is one of excitement, we can easily confuse this with the essence of joy. But clearly it is not joy; it is medication of your fear.

Where these inquiries can take us is to a perspective where we can begin to see this polarity of thinking, and the way the mind seesaws back and forth between the outcome you fear and the outcome of your fantasy. We can all easily see how the mind makes up a fearful future when it is in raw contact with uncertainty. But there is another side of Mind that is equally problematical.

The following is a common example which illustrates how we can really damage our confidence, and work at cross-purposes to having clarity in the now:

Let us say you have been struggling for a long time, and finally, you get a break. You have a great week where everything appears to go your way. What is the first thing the excitement wave does? Mind takes these facts in the now, and uses them to make a prediction about the future. That prediction is usually: ‘Everything is okay now! Phew! What a relief! The future is going to look like this!’
Whatever you do, do not fall into this trap of positive thinking, expectation, and positive predictions. These are all interpretations of the moment, and they have nothing to do with the moment itself and what we must notice about it. At times like this it's useful to add the words 'or not' to whatever statement or conclusion we come to regarding our circumstances. In this way you can train your attention so that you stop predicting anything about the future, negative or positive. Train your awareness to hold the moment by getting through to yourself that the future does not exist except in your imagination.

This is all part of a process whereby you can set yourself on a course of identifying your own mythology and illusions about your finances, and how your mind uses positive and negative fantasy to cloud your perceptions of reality and keep you out of power. What will make you powerful is the development of your ability to be present with the uncertainties that are there, and to make now-based choices between your actionable options in the now, neither scaring nor deluding yourself, and facing what is with unflinching willingness."

From 'Comfortable With Uncertainty' by Pema Chodron

2011-03-31T14:36:00.000-07:00

“What we’re working with in basic meditation practice…is the middle ground between acting out and repressing. We learn to see our thoughts of hatred, lust, poverty, loathing, whatever they might be. We learn to identify the thoughts as ‘thinking,’ let them go, and begin to contact the texture of energy that lies beneath them. We gradually begin to realize how profound it is just to let those thoughts go, not rejecting them, not repressing them…When we don’t act out and we don’t repress, our passion, our aggression, and our ignorance become our wealth…With all the messy stuffy, no matter how messy it is, just start where you are – not tomorrow, not later, not yesterday when you were feeling better – but now. Start now, just as you are.” ~ Pema Chodron

Judgment: The Slipperiest Slope There Is

2011-03-30T18:58:00.000-07:00

The past few weeks have been an accelerated course in judgment for me. At every turn, I've been very much aware of the power of judgment to influence my perception, behavior, and choice. While this is nothing especially new, I've noticed that something has shifted in my ability to be aware of the patterns of my life around this issue. I offer the following from my teacher Spotted Eagle that resonates deeply for me. May it do the same for you.

"Judgment is as insidious as it is perpetrating. Laced with pity, shame, and guilt, it can seem to elevate us to the role of martyr, but wrapped in blame and outrage, it can seem to elevate us to the role of avenging angels. Now, from this false sense of superiority, this is how we confuse what is deeply dysfunctional, but an all too human reaction, confused with the truth. What is true is that we are human, and that our reactions are based in existential fear, our deepest fears about not getting what we think we need to survive.

The creative principle of communication will give us the power to see that because we are human, that what is true about humanity is also true about us. That we are no different from our fellows, and they are no different from us. We are all afraid. We are all possessed of traits that we are here to transcend. Our differences are differences of degree rather than of kind. And we are all aspiring to something higher, whether or not it may seem so at the time in this particular lifetime.

Our inquiry begins with the questions, “Can we, as human beings, possess distortions in our perception and not perpetrate? Can we undergo suffering and not feel victimized? Can we witness suffering and not deem to violate the sanctity of the other’s sacred journey through rescuing?”

The truth is, you cannot grieve the suffering of another. You cannot know how another actually feels or know his motivations. You can only observe his reaction. All else is your own projection and drama. What we perceive about the other’s experience and feelings can only be made up in our own minds, based on how we think we ourselves might feel in similar circumstances. So anything we do in response to our projections is based on the deep distortions of existential fear. What is our alternative? It is to be heart‐centered, and to speak and act from this place." ~ Spotted Eagle

'A Garden of the Mind' by Phil Gates

2011-03-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

Below is an article on gardening by Phil Gates from the BBC news website which I found to be especially inspiring. As a late bloomer (ouch! please pardon the pun, but I couldn't resist) to the joys and struggles of gardening, I have found it to be enormously rewarding. It has taught me so much about cultivating (sorry, again!) patience, perseverance, and the powers of transformation. Case in point is the Meyer Lemon tree pictured at the bottom of this post.
When I first brought it home from the nursery (another apt metaphor) and planted it in the front garden, it was small, but lush and vibrant. Then, not long after, its leaves turned yellow and, to my great horror, proceeded to fall off. I quickly became bereft and launched into a program of nourishing the soil, adjusting its water, and generally fretting over it. Well-meaning friends and countless websites gave me much advice as to how to help the tree thrive. I'd announce (often to the tree itself - maybe not such a good idea?!) various ultimatums as to how much money I was willing to spend on supplements and how long I was prepared to wait for it to turn around and start being the lemon tree I wanted it to be. When those deadlines came and went and nothing (at least that I could see) was changing, I would repeat the process. One day after nearly a year of this nutty little dance, I noticed a tiny leaf growing on one of the recently totally bare branches and I jumped for joy. Before long, other leaves began to appear, then blossoms. Be still my heart!

And now, here's Mr. Gates on his experience:

"I've been gardening the same patch of ground, 60 paces long and 10 wide, for a quarter of a century. Over more than half of my adult life, I've developed a sense of personal attachment to the garden that I could never have anticipated. Ground that was rough grass and bare soil when we arrived now evokes the same emotions as a family photo album. The weeping pear, that was small enough to fit in a car boot when I brought it home, dominates the garden and is a reminder of the passing of time and of the sorely-missed friend who gave it to us. I bought the lilac to celebrate the birth of our third child, the burnet rose with unusual magenta-flecked petals was a cutting taken on a memorable family holiday on the Northumberland coast, the sweet peas are seeds from the fragrant strain my grandmother nurtured on her allotment and the double-flowered daylilies came from the garden I grew up in. But the emotional side of gardening is more than a wander down the horticultural equivalent of memory lane. There's the excitement and anticipation that comes from watching buds form and open in spring.

Right now I'm waiting for a bird of paradise (Strelitzia) flower bud to open. Thirty years ago, before we had a garden, I grew one from seed to the point of flowering on the window ledge of our flat, then our heating system failed while we were away and it had turned to mush when we returned. Any day now I'll finally be able to watch one of these charismatic flower buds open. As a garden matures, so does the sense of responsibility and accompanying anxiety for the wildlife that moves in.

The garden pond (dig one and amphibians will come) seethes with frogs in spring but two years ago a heron arrived and we watched the massacre in horror. Netting the pond is now an annual spring ritual. Exasperation and disappointment are emotions that all gardeners have to cope with. Impatient for early crops, I planted out our runner beans too soon last year and watched them collapse as the morning sun melted frost on their leaves.

Spring is a time of excitement for gardeners. I've watched rows of seedlings disappear overnight, with silvery slime trails at dawn revealing the culprit. I've cursed my clumsiness when I've snapped off an orchid flower spike at the point of flowering and watched over-watered cacti rot. But for all the failures, there are more than enough moments of elation to compensate - like fingers stained from picking raspberries and blackcurrants, or harvesting the first aromatic sun-warmed strawberry, a far cry from the supermarket chiller-cabinet equivalents.

There's also the satisfaction - and, I guess, some slight redemption from the sense of guilt for being a polluting consumer - when wildlife moves in and shares the garden. It was a thrill to discover that orange tip butterflies have a small breeding colony in our suburban garden. There's joy to be had in the sense of trust when a robin takes meal worms from between your fingers and a real sense of privilege when something exotic - like the flock of waxwings that plundered the rotting crab apples in our garden this winter - pays you a visit.

Perhaps the best emotion, though, is to be had during an early summer evening at dusk when the gardening tools have been put away, the garden fills with scent of honeysuckle and the songs of blackbirds echo off the surrounding houses. It's a simple feeling to have done something creative and worthwhile through hard physical work.

Today most of us could feed ourselves and satisfy our need for floral beauty with a Friday night trolley-dash around the supermarket shelves and a weekend trip to a florist or park, so why do so many of us toil over gardens? Growing flowers is more enriching than popping to the garage. It would be foolish to claim that most of us can ever be self-sufficient in growing our own food, or that it's financially rewarding, but planting a few potatoes and raising some leeks and beans maintains an unbroken thread of experience that links us to the first hunter-gathers who settled to become farmers 10 millennia ago.

This spring, when I dig and plant, and watch the seedlings germinate and flourish, I'll share the smell of freshly-dug earth and the emotions that they felt ten millennia ago. Later, when the leaves on the silver birch that I planted in garden hedge turn yellow and fall, as another gardening season ends, it will be time to reflect on the end of a cycle that most of us, if we're lucky, get to enjoy only around 70 times in a lifetime.

Every annual cycle is different - and more precious than the last. Television gardening programmes have done a great job at demonstrating how trips to the garden centre can turn a small suburban plot into a haven of beauty. What they don't tell you is that once the gardening bug has bitten you may find yourself committed to an annual roller-coaster ride of emotions that can transport you from the heights of elation to the outer limits of exasperation and - along the way - deliver a reminder of what it is to be human."

On Being Faithful, Part 2

2011-03-26T11:28:00.000-07:00

The previous post introduced an inquiry around examining what offends us. Here, we are encouraged to take a deeper look into how the experience of being offended informs our behavior and choices. In my own life, I see this operating at a reflexive or habitually reactive level. I may like to think that I am willing to take responsibility for how I interpret my world, my place in it, and my behavior, but I do not always do so. When I'm acting out, I tip into shame, blame, guilt, outrage, pity and self-pity in the blink of an eye - and, it all feels so justified. Seeing ourselves and our issues in action requires willingness; willingness to confront ourselves and what we're up to with an open mind and an open heart. Only then can we take that next step toward evolving and maturing our choices - with compassion for self and for other.

"When you examine this list [of what offends you], notice that you are the one who has taken offense, either because of your conditioning, your issues, or whatever moral code you have adopted and cultivated since your birth. He would remind you that you do not come in with a moral code. But, the first time you are fed something you found distasteful, you might have responded by simply spitting it out. It is when your caregiver insists that you eat it that you start taking offense, and an issue is created. This is how it started, not with the original you who simply responded to what was there in present time. It started with the imposition upon you to become conditioned and acculturated, and the effects of the cumulative adaptation to the culture are that the authentic self who once simply responded to what was there has learned how to force himself to do what is onerous and unnatural to him. If this conditioning has built within it rewards for being and doing “good”, the self that naturally follows its joy becomes submerged and subordinated to the self that serves the rules set for him by others.

One example might be giving out of pity for the suffering of others. The culture tells you this is a “good” work, to give of yourself, your money, and your time to those who are less fortunate than you are, and he would include in this group the endangered species, the decimated forests, and the polluted oceans. When you feel the urge to do good works on the behalf of the needy things of this world, you start with a decision you made about what is needed, based not upon what might actually be needed to propel a person on his sacred healing journey. Instead, your decision is motivated by whatever there is in the circumstances that is triggering your own unresolved pain. So you might now be aware that this thing you call giving is really just medication for your own pain. You give, and then you feel a little goodness high, and your pain goes away…at least temporarily.

This is not compassion; it is sympathy. Sympathy is about identifying with your projections about what others may be feeling or going through. It has everything to do with you and your issues, and nothing to do with the other. You cannot act faithfully, because you are resisting what is, and what you think you are supposed to do to help is also an act of resistance. What you may not understand is that, without presence, you cannot neutrally or lovingly witness suffering in another.

And until you can witness suffering in neutrality and love, what you do can only outflow from your unresolved pain. When you can witness suffering and remain present, you will know instinctively what is needed, if anything, and you will know if you are the right person to give this thing without sacrificing your faithfulness to yourself, your own needs, and your joy.

Giving is not an essence. It is not necessarily good or bad. Giving is neutral. It is the context for your giving that makes it what ever it is, and you cannot know the appropriateness of any gift if you are not in the moment. Do you give impulsively? Then you are probably medicating your fear of rejection, and attempting to garner approval through an unconscious desire for approval, or the belief that having something yourself takes it away from another. You may be attempting to resolve your polarity. You cannot give with integrity until you can give to yourself what is authentically your own.

So, if you find yourself unable to serve your own joy, creativity, and ease, then it is hubris to think you can give with integrity and empowerment to another. You can only give faithfully when you can act from the authority of the true self, the creator of your possibilities which cannot help but honor the possibilities of the other, no matter what the other is suffering. You cannot create the reality of another. You can only create your own reality. Remember this the next time you are offended by something, some act, or someone."

On Being Faithful, Part 1

2011-03-23T16:17:00.000-07:00

My teacher Spotted Eagle refers to our deepest fears of the future and our regrets about the past as being generated by what he calls our "biological contract." He puts it this way:

"The biological contract states that there are not enough resources, and only through domination or being loved can we have access to what we need, therefore we must find a way to compete. The biological human concerns himself obsessively with his access to resources, protection, and support. He does this in three ways:

1. obligation (love)
2. domination (power)
3. subservience (safety)

Your biggest fear is that your survival depends upon these things, and that if you do not compete effectively, you will be abandoned by the tribe and die."

Heady and heavy stuff, yes? If you look back on your life and the choices you've made, I have a feeling that you, like me, can see this contract in action at virtually every important decision you've made - whether influencing you to act out or as a point of principle prompting you to conduct yourself with intergrity. When we speak about overcoming fear, what we're talking about is overcoming our fear of uncertainty as an agent of our choices. As I see it, it's why we're here.

The following is Part 1 of a series of teachings I'm sharing on Faith and how the biological contract influences our perceptions, behaviors, and choices around the concept of faith:

"The culture has so much morality tied up in the concept of being faithful, making faith about broken promises, disappointed expectations, and so on. If you look at this squarely, from the point of view of breaking the biological contract you will see immediately that being faithful in the now is really about being true to what is authentically who we are, and being true to what is authentic in the other. What this means is that we must withdraw our support of others acting out their biological contract. We know that we cannot make someone to be something this person is not, any more than this person can make us something we are not. You can see this at work in a troubled relationship. Two people are trying to be faithful to some sort of expressed or implied promise that requires one or both of them to sacrifice authenticity. The biological contract motivates them to be faithful to this idea of a promise and to be completely unfaithful to themselves.

You have all heard the expressions 'faithful representation' and 'high fidelity.' What these expressions mean is this: as close as possible to the original authentic thing, whether it is a photograph, a painting, music, or an electronic signal on a wireless network. As close as possible to the original. What does this mean to you?

To Spotted Eagle this means as close to the authentic self as possible. When we speak about authenticity, it may surprise you to know that our current interpretation, giving the word to mean genuine, is really only about 300 years old. The actual origin of this word in Greek meant “something that has the authority of its original creator”, and the word authority, deriving from the word meaning to originate.

Authentic. Original. Having the authority of its creator. If you look at authenticity through this lens, you become aware of its defiance of the biological contract. The biological contract surrenders authority to others, to institutions, to mental constructs such as morality, legality, and various codes of conduct created by the myriad of cultures that span our globe, all enforced with the contract’s enforcement methods: shame, blame, guilt, moral outrage, and pity. In the macrocosm, this is easy to witness and conceive. But let us take a view into the microcosm of the self, and all the rules we have adopted or made up. You can begin with the list of everything that offends you."

I hope you will take the time to reflect on what offends you as a means to inform your personal inquiry into Faith and how it functions in your life.

On Vulnerability As a Path to Wholeness

2011-03-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

Lately my inquiry into vulnerability, and how I have a pattern of turning away from it, has taken on an accelerated quality. It's more clear than ever to me that we cannot evolve our lives without it.

Here is a teaching from Spotted Eagle on how our stories are entwined with the effort to hide our authenticity, to present a false self that never makes mistakes or is wrong - striving for perfection and thus the illusion of power, safety, and/or value:

"If you are not willing to be vulnerable, you can never have spiritual power. You can never embrace uncertainty. You cannot be in the now, where you can experience your wholeness.

The word vulnerable comes to us from the Latin root that meant wound. This is very intriguing when we look at the relationship between hiding our psychological wounds and our unwillingness to be vulnerable. So, the more we hide, the more our authenticity is sacrificed, and the less authentic we are, the more power we lose. The more wounds we allow to go unprocessed, the more our well-being comes under attack, not from the outside, but from the inside, from the Mind and all of its extraordinarily powerful machinery manufacturing our perceptions, manufacturing our behavior, and causing us to store emotional fear in the body and make it sick.

Now, the story is like a map to where our wounds are hiding, unprocessed and unhealed. We have convinced ourselves that these emotional wounds should be hidden, driven underground, covered up in

some way. From the time we are born, we surrender our authenticity to this kind of fear. We surrender our contact with who we are and why we are here, and we begin to believe that we are here to be perfect, in a perfect world, with perfect people in it. When reality does not match up to this cultural fantasy, we experience this as a severance with the divine. There are many myths about this 'great separation’; that the world was once perfect but somehow we lost the right to have it this way because we were defective, not enough, insignificant, worthless, or somehow undeserving. We are ashamed. We are to blame. We are guilty. We are outraged. And we feel very sorry for ourselves. It is only through spiritual seeking, that longing for a truth that lies beyond what we fear, that moves us to a place where we begin to question the validity of this, the most fundamental story that perfection, this mythological ideal, has been lost. As souls seeking to overcome fear in this lifetime, this is the journey that must be embraced as perfect." ~ Spotted Eagle

Energetic Capital

2011-03-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

Creativity is a fundamental human experience. We tend to have little to no patience if what we desire to create offers resistance. And, we often react with frustration, anger, and/or bitterness. In this teaching, Spotted Eagle speaks to the manner in which we invest our time and energy and where our inquiry needs to begin if the return on our investment depletes instead of replenishes our reserves.

"Now, it is a very interesting thing to notice that a human being can force into being a specific outcome, at least some of the time, through the force of emotional reaction to what she fears or what excites her. Emotional reactions can fuel the will, but they do this at very great cost. This is because in forcing the will to push energy toward a goal, the individual does not receive an energetic return on this investment of energy because forms created in this way rarely hold any essence for the individual who created them. So, this depletes the person of energy and gives her nothing that might replenish her energetic reserves.
It is important for you to understand that it is our experience of essence that replenishes our reserves of energy. This might manifest itself as enthusiasm, joyfulness, inspiration, and so forth. You can feel the difference between essence, and the emotional energy of fear, control, domination, and force; these are all about attachment to a certain result. The former create a flow of [essence] feelings that energize our efforts. The latter only exhaust us.
Over the course of a lifetime of preventing what he fears, hiding from what threatens him, or chasing his excitement wave, the individual’s ability to create essence grinds gradually to a standstill. The will to create becomes exhausted, and the mind can see no way forward because what it has used as creative fuel — the emotional reaction — has drained the individual of his will to keep pushing energy. The mind can see clearly that there is no more will to create, and its fear of the uncertain future then becomes magnified. Because the fearful mind that has exhausted its will can see no way forward, it will then come to believe in the futility of its efforts, and this is when we begin to despair."

The Anatomy of Authenticity

2011-03-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from Brene Brown's book The Gifts of Imperfection. I first became aware of Brown from her TEDx talk on the power of vulnerability [link at the bottom of this post]. She quickly won me over with her great intelligence, heart, humor, and humility. So many friends have passed along her links and recommended her work to me that I would like to do the same for you. This piece is on authenticity:

"Authenticity is a daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are.

Choosing authenticity means

cultivating the courage to be imperfect, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable;
exercising the compassion that comes from knowing that we are all made of strength and struggle; and
nurturing the connection and sense of belonging that can only happen when we believe we are enough.

Authenticity demands Wholehearted living and loving - even when it's hard, even when we're wrestling with the shame and fear of not being good enough, and especially when the joy is so intense that we're afraid to let ourselves feel it.

Mindfully practicing authenticity during our most soul-searching struggles is how we invite grace, joy, and gratitude into our lives." ~ Brene Brown

Brene Brown - The Power of Vulnerability TED video

What Are Your Motives? A Guest Post from Marvin Luzum

2011-03-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

Marvin shares an excerpt from Spotted Eagle's recording Creating With Essence:

"Examine the structures in your life. Ask yourself is this job, house, partner, activity or direction bringing me essence, and if not what is the essence that is missing here? If you are telling yourself you have no choice you can know that this is never the truth. What is true if you are saying this, is that you are afraid to make the choice that would bring you essence. So he would ask you, examine your true motives for doing what does not bring you essence and if it is a list of fears then you are not being authentic and essence will elude you!"

The Body as Energetic Instrument

2011-03-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

"When we look at what we pray for, we pray for outcomes. And when we do not get the outcome we are expecting, who do we blame? Really what we’re saying is, God has abandoned me! But what we are really thinking is, this is God’s fault, because he made this plane, or this body, or these people so imperfect!

It is interesting to notice here, that it is through our attempts to be invulnerable, this is quite ironically how we make ourselves totally vulnerable. And not just to psychological issues, but also how we make ourselves vulnerable to disease. Our fears and issues are stored in tissue. They make us sick. They cut us off from our life giving, healing energy. They can make us addicted to action, or paralyzed with fear.

Physiologically, they keep us flooded with stress hormones, and this may set off a cascading set of health issues that eventually culminate in a crisis as the body tries in vain to protect its secrets while it cannot help but express them.

The starting place for transforming our health is in understanding how the body works as an energetic instrument. If we begin with the premise that we, as souls, are here to overcome fear and create from our desire to experience essence, we can see the body’s role in this evolutionary process.

In short, we are here to convert our own deepest existential fears about the future into dominion over the present moment and the wholeness that this requires of us. And this occurs when we can step off into the uncertainty of the present moment, willing for that moment to be whatever it is because we trust that what is laid before us is for our evolution." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-03-11T15:43:00.000-08:00

Whether we experience illness on a personal or relational level, it offers us a powerful opportunity to focus our attention and, in the process, the potential to grow.

“Illness is often our most rich and fulfilling path to spiritual growth because illness brings up so much fear - especially serious illness. If there ever was a challenge for us to be in the now, fear of a serious illness is certainly that challenge. At these times you need to have a lot of compassion for yourself and recognize how powerful you really are to have even taken on this challenge and what that speaks about who you are as a soul and what that says about the courage and the capacity that you have to be a compassionate loving person. Illness is a powerful doorway into focusing on essence - the feeling experience you want out of life - and to really understanding how valuable each now moment really is and to see how we are in the habit of squandering it in our fear of the future.” ~ Spotted Eagle

Release by Diane Feingold

2011-03-09T16:40:00.000-08:00

Please enjoy this guest post from Diane Feingold, Water Release Therapy practitioner and instructor:

Release

'Water Release Therapy ‘on land.

Sobonfu Some, a beautiful woman from the Dagara tribe in West Africa had much to share about her ritual on 'Grief'.

She expresses how important it is for the Release to be witnessed by others in community in order to find true joy in life. She advocates this as an ongoing process for healing and well-being.

And essential in order to find true joy in life. She states ‘Grief is the other side of the coin of True Joy’.

Working in the warm Water with my clients, I have come to understand and witness how energy moves, release, when given a safe container, happens naturally and until now had not really understood how we can use the water within our bodies to Release on land with community.

It is a learning and it is hard work.

In Sobonfu’s tribal community it is part of everyday life, no one gets away with their issues. People are held responsible to share ‘whatever’ with the community, as it is always a community problem.

The more the issue is ignored the more people will show up with the same problem until it is recognized and grieved.

Apparently statistics have shown these people although living in poverty are the happiest people on Earth.

As human beings on the Earth plane this seems so natural and yet so unrecognized as viable and essential to real personal health, community social health, and healing for the planet.

As though the Earth has been calling us to do our ‘work’ enter this process and shed the emotions ….so she can recycle, plant, heal the holes. As long as we hold back there is no movement, no healing, only denial and distraction (and we sure have many ways to medicate our pain and discomfort).

The real kicker is the importance of being witnessed by community in this process.

Who wants to sign up? For the most part we are in the west truly conditioned; our culture teaches us nothing about Grief, only to suck it up. Get on with life like everyone else. Why people turn to all religions including Atheisms’ and Agnosticism is easily seen.

One doesn’t need a great loss of a beloved in order to grieve.

One can grieve about anything; loss of youth, loss of dreams, relationship, health, a pet, a betrayal, abuse, miscarriage, anything and everything can be fodder for the Alter of Grief.

This goes beyond religion… this is about what Sobonfu refers to as ‘spirit’. I understand this as Life Force Energy, you know the stuff that animates life, pushes the dandelions out of the concrete and includes the ‘Great Mystery’.

Finding the ‘right people’ and the safe container is also a critical part of the teachings.

Blessings and gratitude to a courageous woman who is willing to share her Ancestor’s teachings by being a 'cleaner' and willing to teach this work.

Courage to all who wish to heal whether on land or water and with witness.

Courage to do the work. As one person stated; we clean our cars, we clean our homes, our bodies, we clean our hard drives, we clean the wax out of our ears, we do our laundry… why would we not clean our emotional body?

http://www.tolifewithwatsu.com

2011-03-07T08:45:00.000-08:00

"To master the resources necessary to create with joy and ease, you must gain dominion over your time. In fact, you must gain dominion over time itself by anchoring your awareness in the present moment where you can have clarity. Let us say that you know the essence you want to experience, but you believe you lack clarity about how to move forward toward this essence. You tell yourself that you do not know what to do. You tell yourself that you can do nothing until you know what it is you are doing, have a plan of action, know what it is you want, or know that you are making the 'right' choice.

These are examples of beliefs that will displace your thinking and move you directly into paralysis. If this is your obstacle, consider that clarity could be defined as those moments when you have intention to experience essence, willingness to have the present moment be exactly what it is, the patience and emotional neutrality to allow the Universe to be in charge of the timing, and awareness of the present moment so that you can know when the time to act has emerged in the now."
~ Grandfather White Elk

2011-03-04T17:10:00.000-08:00

"Free will – now there is a tricky business. After all, it is freedom of choice that results in most of what gets created in our lives. There are questions implicit in this realization that it is our choices which ultimately create the outcome. We have to ask. We don’t really know what consequences our choices will have. So how can we know and be aware of the consequences of our choices when the choice is made? The answer is: we can’t know. More importantly, if the choice is sourced in fear and issues, we can be very sure that we are choosing based on a distorted impression of what that choice will bring about. This makes free will a bit of a hot potato.
The reason this is so is because a will governed by fear and issues is not free. It is, first of all, blind to many of its options, and it cannot trust that the creative flow will lead it in the direction of its treasured essence. It is not focused on the essence. It is focused on medication.

When the will is not free, creating is very hard work. The will starts looking for what will medicate its fear of the future. It becomes attached. Its view of reality is distorted, so it cannot tell what its options are. This is the reason that we cannot work to get into a flow. In fact, the harder we work at it, the further away we get from what flows for us.
Pulling things toward us, manipulating people or situations to get the outcome that will medicate our fear, projecting illusions to hide what we do not want others to see, or to make them think that something unreal is actually real—these consume a great deal of energy that is then not available for creative use. It requires a huge investment of energy to manipulate the reality of others to entice them to behave a certain way toward us. It is purely an act of fear, whether we are mollifying that person, actively seducing him, or simply positioning ourselves to indulge our appetites and self‐medicate our fear of or resistance to the realities of uncertainty." ~ Spotted Eagle

Now What?

2011-03-02T17:13:00.000-08:00

We've all heard a lot about 'Now' - how we're in the Now, not in the Now, and/or somewhere in the middle. While I embrace the concept that the now moment, the present moment is the only true reality, I also feel as though there is often a subtle agenda at play as to what that means. In other words, there is a Now and if you're not there, then you have somehow missed the mark and are not quite spiritually evolved enough. In contrast, the creative principle of presence feels like a satisfying alternative to how we generally use the word 'now.' My teacher Spotted Eagle has this to say about presence:

"When we see divine love as the spirit that moves through all of creation, we can begin to understand what is meant by the phrase, 'converting fear into love.' That conversion happens in a moment of presence.

Presence is more than the absence of fear of the uncertain future; it is also these things:

• Observation of everything that is in the present moment
• A will free of fear and resistance so that it can choose freely to act or not act
• The ability to come to the moment undecided about what is there, without a trace of agenda to do anything at all
• Non‐resistance, acceptance of whatever is in the now
• Identifying energies that are resistant to the flow
• A willingness to remain unflinchingly neutral in the presence of great suffering, without a shred of pity or sympathy

These qualities are the hallmarks of true compassion, and this is what presence really is. Presence allows us to fully embrace what is true about the now, and see the divine love that is the thread connecting everything that has ever occurred in the Universe. Presence acknowledges the pressure that is constantly brought to bear upon human consciousness. It allows us to transcend existential fear and trust in the emerging truth, however painful it may be, or however uncertain it makes us feel. In a state of presence, we can embrace authentic pain—anger, grief, confusion, and fear—and not give into the pressure to medicate our pain by indulging in our reactions. And in this way, we provide a sacred environment that allows others to do the same. What we do with our presence is we provide emotional safety, and this is what allows the body/psyche of others to surrender their trauma at whatever intensity it holds." ~ Spotted Eagle

Vision & Inspiration

2011-02-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

"Vision devises nothing, plans nothing, designs nothing, contrives nothing. It has nothing to do with what we hope will happen. Vision refers not to fantasies of the form we envision, but instead more to the manner in which something is seen. Perhaps this can be understood more clearly when we examine what we mean when we say that someone is a person who has vision.

Think of the great artists and inventors like Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas Edison; or great thinkers and social reformers like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, Sylvia and Emily Pankhurst; or great resisters of tyranny like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. And then, of course, there are the great theoretical scientists Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
What we can see from this rather small list of visionary thinkers is that they did not fantasize about the future, and yet, they were able to imagine something that did not yet exist. These visionaries saw their world differently than most people of their time and because of this they were able to access a field of possibility and from that field actualize a real and tangible potential that created enormous shifts for all of humanity.
These people had visions that had some very important elements in common, and these are clarity about the essence and purpose, and most of all – originality. What we can realize is that vision conceives of something and when we look at the roots of the word conception, we can learn that this word comes from the Latin words that mean to join and to take. And, clearly, this infers something important about the conceiving that vision does. It brings something together. It joins something – and through this process takes away something that is not only the sum of its parts, it’s something original. Now, when we conceive of something that does not yet exist, the fruit of this conception is inspiration." ~ Spotted Eagle

Degree Rather Than Kind

2011-02-20T15:16:00.000-08:00

"Very often, the truth first presents itself as subtle pressure that gradually increases over time. Recall, right now, a close personal relationship that has ended. When you examine it, you can see that the truth about yourself and the other in relationship was present from the very beginning as a subtle pressure that was ignored. The same is true of many of our choices that have ended “badly.” There were intuitive messages, pressures that we discounted, and had we paid attention, we might have spared ourselves the resulting suffering. It is this disconnect from our now‐based truth that, when compounded, will very often lead to those events we might even label as evil. What we can say about “evil” people—what we can observe about them—is that they are in a state of almost complete disconnection from the love that they are. They have lost contact with the subtle pressures that form the moral compass of a human being, and so they succumb to the more demanding pressures of the artificial, conditioned emotional reactions: shame, blame, guilt, outrage, pity, and self‐pity. If you think yourself to be very different from those whom you label “evil,” you need to recognize that the difference is really of degree rather than of kind." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-02-19T10:00:00.000-08:00

My teacher Grandfather White Elk has much to say on creating with essence and intention as our guiding principles. The following is from his course 'Wealth of Joy':

"Essence is not fettered by your fears and judgments. Essence is eternal and evolving. Essence is the flow. So, whether or not you are willing to accompany it, Essence will always follow your evolving Vision. Essence is there to fuel the actualization of your dreams. It is there to energize your Purpose. It wants to be the foundation of your creations, the structure around which your energy builds the forms in your life.

So, let us examine now an area of your life that holds little essence for you. To set your intention to create with essence, you must first identify the essences that you want to experience in this area so that you can make choices that are in alignment with this vision. You must fill your awareness with your purpose, and cleave to its guidance. If you say that you want to be true to your Vision and Purpose, but you do not act in accordance with their principles, your lack of willingness has caused you to intellectualize your intention rather than live it, and so it will be of little or no value to you as a tool for navigating the field of all possibility where your unmanifested potential to experience essence lies. Every desire is founded in the expectation that essence will be experienced, and every desire for essence has a higher purpose it wants to serve. In the moment, any essence is possible without limitation."

~ Grandfather White Elk

Relating Soul-to-Soul

2011-02-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

"Unconditional love is a human expression of the divine, the love of the Creator that is our birthright. When a relationship reflects this light of Spirit, the soul shines like a beacon, directing our course through the turbulent energy that is the world." ~ Grandfather White Elk

Taking Authentic Action

2011-02-12T13:14:00.000-08:00

“Let us say that you know the essence, but you feel impatient to know the form and make it happen. You think there is something you should do to make it happen. So you decide upon a form and launch into action. When you think you need to make something happen, you can only find yourself in pursuit of some thing. This guarantees that you will be pursuing a form out of impatience and in violation of the principle of Universal timing, instead of building the form on the foundation of essence.

Perhaps there is a form you are considering, or there is a form you have already created which has some of the essences you desire, but not all of them. Mind tells you to compromise, but you do this at your own peril. Essence is uncompromising, and eventually the essences you forfeited will rise up and demand actualization. When this happens, the form becomes untenable, and you will be forced to bear the burden of it in struggle, or destroy what you have created.

If you hear Mind tempting you to actualize or maintain a partial-essence form, it will probably sound like this: 'I can make this work.' Listen to what you are really saying: 'I can make this work. I can make this a struggle.' And the truth is, if you sacrifice your authenticity, you can probably make it work for some period of time. And you will surely struggle in the process. What has happened is that you have allowed Mind to trick you into thinking that you can force essence into a form. The truth is, forms are built on the structure of essence, or on the structure of fear-based thinking. A partial-essence form is built on both, so ultimately, it cannot be maintained without the sacrifice of your happiness.” ~ Grandfather White Elk

What Grandfather is teaching us here is that our fears and our fantasies are conditioned constructs which become the lenses through which we perceive and interpret our experiences – and then from which we create our lives. He asks us to observe, observe, observe – and then observe some more – with patience, compassion, and willingness. He asks us to persevere, to be honest with ourselves, to be brave as we thoroughly examine our beliefs, and what we do that doesn’t bring us little or no essence. He encourages us to take a deep look into how we behave and choose out of judgment, insecurity, self-sacrifice, expectation, or obligation…and then be willing to unhook from these things.
Where these inquiries lead us may be straight into a massive trigger event &/or crisis. And, as always, we have freedom of choice – whether or not we allow ourselves that awareness. Do we keep the status quo or are we willing to rock the boat? Do we settle for mediocrity or do we summon the courage to risk facing our fears and make other choices? Are we willing to tell the truth to ourselves and those close to us – even if it means risking pain for ourselves or others and perhaps loss? Ultimately, this is always the big question. Our joy – our authenticity - depends upon asking it, and staying with the inquiry, completely willing to ride out our emotional waves until we have clarity – which is very different than certainty.

2011-02-09T17:29:00.000-08:00

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” ~ Abraham Maslow

My teacher Spotted Eagle expands on Maslow's point when he says:

"If the only tools you have are fear-based, then you will tend to perceive every problem as a control issue and your thinking will follow one of two tracks: either you will feel that there is nothing you can do to solve your problems and sink into despair. Or you will think there is something you must do to avoid what you fear and then start pushing energy. In either case, access to the the creative principle of curiosity and its energies will be closed to you. We must cultivate the humility to admit that we do not know the truth of any now until it emerges for us in that now. We cannot be in the now when we are burdened with either the hubris or the self‐deprecation of our decisions about reality.

A decision about reality is really only the Mind’s attempt to make the uncertain future predictable. Once a decision about reality is made, energy is invested in the decision, and that energy is not only lost to you as a creative potential; it is also energy locked in past time as a memory waiting to assert itself in your awareness as a substitute for objective reality. To free that energy and make it available for our creative endeavors, we must, through the authentic use of curiosity, invalidate our certainty about anything and everything we believe to be certain. Then we must employ our curiosity in service of traveling upon what we do not know, so that we can be open to learning something that will energize our pursuit of essence." ~ Spotted Eagle

A Guest Post from Marvin Luzum on Creating With Essence

2011-02-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

"We must learn how to be authentic in our thoughts, our words and our actions, uncompromising in the face of our insecurities and our neediness. We must hold firm in our intention to experience essence while we honor the timing of the universe which may be very different from our own. We must be aware in those moments when our fears would dictate a choice that is not authentic. We must embrace the growth and learn that we must grow and evolve into the person who can live his or her life as an expression of essence, purpose and authenticity. We must learn to be present with the truth of what is there, what we have already created without criticism, fear or judgment. We must value the truth present in each and every moment even if it is uncomfortable, uncertain or even painful. And finally we must embrace the crisis that healing often brings as the most powerful force in the restoration of our wholeness." ~ Spotted Eagle ~ on Creating with Essence

Here Spotted Eagle speaks further to elaborate on the fact that we are here to create our lives not in the way that most of us have been taught by the culture but in a spiritual way. It's not easy to let go of our fears of the future that drive us to establish a level of security vested in cars, homes, perceived wealth and other forms. Instead we need to trust that if we live our lives authentically with our desire for the experience of essence as the guiding force for the universe in creating our lives, that we can instead have a life that is spiritually rich. This is truly why we have taken on the challenge of living in this world.
What Were You Thinking!

Got Blind Spots?

2011-02-05T12:20:00.000-08:00

"If we are closed‐Minded, we cannot access our full potential in the now to experience essence, and those creative energies cannot be made available to us. However, if we are open, we can make use of what knowledge we possess as a doorway to faculties that are intuitive, and that will allow us to apprehend truth without the limiting factors of logic and ego. We can sense what may not be evident or deducible by logical means. We can comprehend because we are open to what we do not yet know. This is what makes us clear‐seeing, unfettered by the distortions of our decisions about realty.
Logic has to begin with an assumption—something decided—and while logic can be a very useful tool, it holds little creative potential as a way of being, because its purpose is to organize and order information. This is the creative principle of curiosity's Achilles heal. Logical assumptions are not necessarily truth, but they do a very good job filling in for it in a pinch. Logic relies to a great extent on the illusion of certainty that we call proof. When we gather information, organize it logically, and use it to prove something, we very often miss the point: our ability to place what we know in context with what is will always be limited. This is because awareness is always fractionalized by what is deducible. When our employment of our gift of curiosity is out of power, it is trying to prove that something is certain with information that is fractionalized and logic built on a foundation of assumption." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-02-04T09:57:00.000-08:00

In a state of resistance and judgment, we all too easily project our own issues onto what we perceive to be happening. From here, it's a short step to taking action based not on what is actually true, but from what our fears tell us is true. How then, do we, while living a human life, cultivate our awareness to the level where we consciously choose to not act out our existential fears and fantasies? My teacher Spotted Eagle illustrates how the creative principle of presence holds the key:

"We can dispute the notion that there is some sort of evil force present in the Universe, or that some balance between good and evil must be maintained, or that there is some sort of war going on between the forces of good and the forces of evil. This entire discussion can be reframed by saying, simply, that the material plane’s impermanence poses the challenge of fear of uncertainty, and that this fear of uncertainty causes us to disconnect from the love that we are. So, we could say, out of fear of uncertainty, all unloving things are birthed.

To the degree we are connected or disconnected, we are either loving or fearful. Discerning or suspicious. Open or blocked. Heart‐centered or defensive. Dominating or subservient. When we see divine love as the spirit that moves through all of creation, we can begin to understand what is meant by the phrase, 'converting fear into love.' That conversion happens in a moment of presence.

Presence is more than the absence of fear of the uncertain future. It is also these things:

Mind the Gap!

2011-02-03T16:41:00.000-08:00

This piece continues with the themes from yesterday's posting on the creative principle of imagination - what Spotted Eagle refers to as 'Sacred Weaving'. We have a tendency to fill in the gap between what we know (or, think we know) and what is uncertain with what we can imagine. This in and of itself is not a problem, per se, if we are simultaneously mindful of the wisdom of uncertainty and present enough to navigate our circumstances authentically. It can be the work of a lifetime to learn how to use our imagination wisely.

"Placing your imagination in service of something higher is what Sacred Weaving is all about. It is about freeing the imagination to be productive of something worthwhile, in full recognition of the fact that such discernment can never be fully objective or untainted by your cultural orientation and your issues. So the larger question for conscious people is this: how do we elevate conditioning to the sacred?

Sacred Weaving instructs us to weave a very different kind of web, and that is the web of inspiration. Inspiration allows us to live in harmony with the web of life, to be at peace with the hopelessness of any starry notions we may have about the family of humankind as a whole. Sacred Weaving allows us, as individuals, to coexist with our human family’s dysfunction, to accept the inevitability within ourselves and others that we will from time‐to‐time succumb to the pressures of our distortions. Sacred Weaving offers us a way to grow ourselves out of this dysfunctional trap, but we must accept that, in living a human life, we will not to shed it entirely.

Sacred Weaving instructs us that reality and perception are inextricably intertwined, and that our relationships with others are perhaps the most uncompromising reflection of this truth. Sacred Weaving respects just how difficult it is to hold our interactions in sacred space, and to treat the truth with reverence, as if it were a sacred object. Sacred Weaving also invites the Heyoka, the sacred clown, into our ceremonial space so that we do not become robotic in our observance of social rituals; so that we do not become sanctimonious and self‐important, but instead maintain our sense of humor and humility when we are faced with life’s inevitable untimely disruptions of our plans and schemes, and its interference with our attachment to certainty and security." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-02-02T13:51:00.000-08:00

Part of the spiritual model my teacher Spotted Eagle has created includes a set of eight organizing principles which illustrate various aspects of human creativity. One of these is called Sacred Weaving and its gift is imagination. Given how easily we are conditioned to fear what we consider to be 'other', to fear what we do not know or understand, and our all too human penchant for fantasy, I thought it might be useful to share a portion of what he has to say about this powerful and often misused gift:

"When we use a word like sacred, it would be easy to confuse it with sanctimony. We are human, and so we are possessed of a certain zeal to dominate with our own righteousness. But if we are truthful, we have to admit that we all suffer from a hefty dose of feigned piety that is sourced in our hypocritical attachment to being right, to having the answer, to our need to occupy the moral high ground, and to use it as justification to dominate the other with our rectitude. We think we are defending the sacred by passing moral judgment on others, from our closest associates to those whose cultural offenses are beamed into our living rooms from far‐flung corners of the world. It is human to consider one culture superior to another. Whether we are looking back with nostalgia on what we imagine about indigenous societies or looking with horror at modern atrocities, all we are really doing is imposing our happy or morbid fantasies on reality.
This is made all the more insidious when we realize that most of our incrimination of others is actually sourced in what we imagine about their thoughts, motives, and intentions. When we engage in this sort emotional imagery, we very often have no idea that we are indulging in a destructive fantasy. The image we are creating in our mind seems very real, and in the absence verifiable facts, we fill the void in our understanding with what we believe is going on behind the veil, and this will always be a direct reflection of our own existential fear." ~ Spotted Eagle

A Guest Post from Marvin Luzum on Creating With Essence

2011-02-01T20:09:00.000-08:00

"To create from our desire for essence is actually much easier than creating the form, but it takes a set of skills that are undeveloped in this culture. The skills we are conditioned to using are of little or no value when we are creating with essence and these are things like planning, defining, goal setting, forecasting, working harder, not making mistakes, setting time limits or targets and the most lucrative, having a clear picture of the form you are trying to create and putting yourself in that picture." ~ Spotted Eagle from "Creating With Essence"

I listen to this recording time after time to remind me of what I have been doing wrong in trying to create my life and most importantly what I must do correctly. I have tried the methods that our culture teaches and they have not succeeded for me. Living my life authentically and giving myself over to the universe and holding onto my desire for essence as a guiding force for creating my life has begun to give me a life that is not steeped in forms but is growing richer in the essences I desire most. Those being freedom, creativity, and joy to list a few. I can't explain it if I look through the lens of what my culture has taught me and I am in wonder how it is coming to be but I am not arguing with it and I am not stopping. I just spend each day efforting to pry myself from the cultural claws that clutch at me in a desperate attempt to keep me within its grasp. Some days are good and some not so good but the flow is there.

One analogy that could be applied to the whole effort is that of floating on a river and I am headed for a falls. The flow of the water is increasing and so is the fear of the approaching falls, ever increasing and my mind keeps telling me I cannot survive this but my heart tells me, yes you can. Finally, inevitably there it will be, the falls and I will plunge through what my mind told me I could not survive, to the quiet pool at the bottom. There I can enjoy the peace and tranquility of a cool swim, giddy with the joy at surviving what was once perceived as unsurvivable.

2011-01-31T08:54:00.000-08:00

"How do we as humans—struggling against intense internal pressure to distort the truth—how do we discern the truth without judging it? How are we to be discriminating in our choices without being hypocritical? How do we stand in our spiritual truth without indulging in the kind of spiritual bigotry that insidiously holds us above those who we deem to be less conscious?
The creative power of communication holds the key. It informs us that what we see “out there” is really a reflection of existential fear, polarities, and issues that we are projecting onto reality. It tells us that we can witness the affect of this by observing human nature, and that by observing human nature, we can discern things about ourselves that are very difficult to admit. But perhaps, most importantly, when we make this admission, then and only then can we surrender our need to be the source and begin to reflect the true source, divinity as reflected in our own hearts." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-01-30T10:21:00.000-08:00

"Judgment is the slipperiest slope there is. It is as insidious as it is perpetrating. Laced with pity, shame, and guilt, it can seem to elevate us to the role of martyr, but wrapped in blame and outrage, it can seem to elevate us to the role of avenging angels.
Now, from this false sense of superiority, this is how we confuse what is deeply dysfunctional, but an all too human reaction, confused with the truth. What is true is that we are human, and that our reactions are based in existential fear, our deepest fears about not getting what we think we need to survive.
The creative principle of communication can give us the power to see that because we are human, that what is true about humanity is also true about us. That we are no different from our fellows, and they are no different from us. We are all afraid. We are all possessed of traits that we are here to transcend. Our differences are differences of degree rather than of kind. And we are all aspiring to something higher, whether or not it may seem so at the time in this particular lifetime." ~ Spotted Eagle

Judgment - The Great Work

2011-01-29T08:55:00.000-08:00

"We tend to regard our own trifling judgments about others as harmless. We think we know what is wrong with humanity, but all the while we are indulging in judgment of those whose actions offend us. Now, if we profess to be governed by spiritual principles, to aspire to the loftiness of saints, what are we honestly aspiring to when we fling our petty judgments around like so much confetti?
As healers and teachers, what does it say about us that we weep over the suffering? We may profess to be touched by suffering, but what we are really saying is that we can put ourselves inside the sufferer and feel his feelings. If you are willing to look deep within your reaction to the suffering of others, what you are sure to find staring back at you is not the truth of the sufferer; what will greet you is your own existential fear which you have projected onto the other.

Acknowledging this is not to condemn us for being human, or for engaging in our human animal behavior. What we can notice here, on a very deep level, is how much our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about the feelings, motives, and agendas of others are really only projections of existential fear that exists within ourselves. For this reason, what we think we “know” is actually only what we make up based upon a highly filtered and distorted view of reality." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-01-28T14:04:00.000-08:00

"There is a very widely held belief that if you had different parents and different early childhood circumstances that you would be a different person than you are today. So, before you examine anything else you will learn about relationship, perhaps the most important first step you can take is to acknowledge that you would have found a way to be right here where you are today, no matter who your parents were or what your circumstances may have been. This is because your life is not an accident. It is a course of study—this lifetime—and you prepare for it before you enter the classroom.

Once you are here, uncertainty comes into play, and it is your relationship with uncertainty that will have the greatest impact on the degree to which you fulfill your intention, and what you create while you are here. So, your relationship with uncertainty, from the time you are an infant until now, has shaped everything about you except for one thing, and that is your desire for essence. Everything else is a construct, including your body." ~ Spotted Eagle on Transforming Your Relationships

A Guest Post from Marvin Luzum on Essence

2011-01-27T11:44:00.000-08:00

"If we focus on the forms of our lives, the job, the house, the car, the clothes, the bank accounts, the wives or husbands, the girlfriends or boyfriends, we can experience life as gain and loss. If instead we put our attention on the essence we receive from these things there is nothing to be lost. Essence is either there in the present moment or it's not there so what we need to do when we make choices is we chose to move in the direction of our dreams not based on the form things take, not on the outcomes of our lives but on our dream for experiencing essence. Then as we move in a direction, choosing something that will bring us that essence, when it shows up we can ask the question, "Is it there?" It will either be there or it won't." ~ Spotted Eagle from his talk on "Peace of Mind"

On Lightness of Being: A Transformational Inquiry

2011-01-26T10:07:00.000-08:00

"Let us start the process of inquiry wherever we find ourselves now. Let us examine what we are resisting about what has already been created in our bodies and in our lives. Let us begin by observing our resistance and seeing that it is so. Where do we perceive what has been created? The resistance to what is, the fear that is its source, the issues that have accumulated emotional charge over the years: these are what must be targeted for transformation. But what is our objective? What is the end product of this effort? It is what we desire in our hearts, those essences that create quality of life: joy, creativity, ease, freedom, fun, and most particularly, lightness of being.

Lightness of being is our most important essence for enjoying health. Lightness of being is the fundamental essence that utterly transcends the conditions and challenges that our bodies face. It is lightness of being allows us to gracefully surrender youth, while we embrace the wisdom, experience, and strength that are the gift of maturity. It is lightness of being allows us to confront serious illness or chronic pain with dignity, poise, and power. It allows us to make difficult choices with confidence, to ride the emotional waves of hope and hopelessness without getting caught in their undertow.
To cultivate health in the body-psyche complex, we must let go of our tendency to go after the body like it was the enemy. We have to stop seeing the body as our betrayer, and allow it to be what it is in the now. We must allow it to move naturally through its changes, its injuries, its diseases, and its aging process. When the body needs intervention, we must provide it, not based on what we fear, but from what we know to be true. If we know what we fear, then we can encourage ourselves to stop shrinking from this and move forward, and use the experience as fuel for spiritual growth." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-01-25T09:07:00.000-08:00

"All fear is created by an unwillingness to embrace an uncertainty. We create stagnancy for ourselves when we try to fulfill our life purpose but keep our fears intact, or when we try to create some false sense of security in our lives. What we can discover when we try to do these two things simultaneously is that they are mutually exclusive endeavors. This leads us to a very important choice: either we continue to create from a place of control and attachment to a form or an outcome - which always takes away our joy...or, we can learn that the Universe creates itself from uncertainty and that what we need to do is to devote ourselves to the process of overcoming fear by embracing uncertainty." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-01-24T15:25:00.000-08:00

"The desire for essence, bringing the attention to the present moment, not getting out into the future trying to manipulate what the future holds - these are the things one can employ toward the creation of a fulfilling life experience. When you look at how we live our lives in every day, it can be a very uncomfortable thing to notice how much energy we pour into manipulating the outcomes of our lives.

We don’t think of it in terms of—“Is my will free enough in this moment to make a free choice?” Instead, what we tell ourselves is — “I don’t have a choice. I have to make this outcome happen. So, I’m going to go pour all this energy into manipulating the circumstances and the people so I can get that outcome, because if I don’t get that outcome, I’m going to be too terrified of uncertainty."

Sustainable creativity is about keeping your will free of fear. The minute you tell yourself that you don’t have a choice — or you don’t have an option—or you want this certain outcome to happen — your will is not free. Your will is bound and gagged by fear and issues. And what you think you are creating is all of a sudden distorted by those fears and issues. So what you wind up doing is pushing energy for this distorted picture of an outcome that you think you have to have. And this is where most human beings squander their life force for their entire lives. They get pretty weak and pretty tired after a while. Decades of living like this, where you are pushing energy and nothing is coming back in a flow is a very dangerous game to play." ~ Spotted Eagle

Reasonable Doubt

2011-01-23T12:20:00.000-08:00

"We all know that fear and judgment destroy our faith, but there are other destroyers.

Going into our heads destroys our faith.

We rattle around inside the perimeter of what we think we know, and we are tricked by the Mind into thinking the answer to what troubles us is to know more. We consume information like gluttons, but the more knowledge we amass, the less we are capable of knowingness in the now. When we are roaming around within the confines of what we think we know, it is as if we have created our reality inside a self-made globe, filled with the world as we see it, but not how it really is.

Living inside our inner fantasies is much the same.

It may as well be a little snow globe filled with plastic snowmen and flecks of glitter snow. It is only a matter of time before the cosmic hammer comes down on your little plastic reality and invites you, however forcefully, to live from something besides your inner fiction.

Waiting to be certain destroys our faith.

If you are certain about anything, then you are fooling yourself. There is something you are not admitting. Learn to live with a reasonable amount of doubt that comes with the territory of embracing uncertainty. A little doubt can be a very good thing. It can be a healthy thing. It can help you ask the right questions, but only if you will anchor your awareness in the now.

We must learn that we can have fear and still have faith in the present moment and in the path as it unfolds for us. We can doubt and still touch that place in our hearts where we can find a little confidence." ~ Spotted Eagle

On Losing Our Ignorance & Reclaiming Our Power

2011-01-22T15:42:00.000-08:00

"Sadness is grieving what is lost, and self‐pity is where we start tipping into a very special kind of judgment called regret. If you analyze your regret, you find that what you are grieving is your loss of the illusion of security. That is one of the biggest things that human beings grieve, is that we had an illusion of security—maybe it was our bank account, or our job, or our lover, or a place where we lived—and then when the crisis occurred, we lost that illusion. The mind wants to go back to that last time it felt certain and secure, and this is what we call regret. We start judging the past, and we can’t just be in the now where we could grieve what is lost. We call it the loss of innocence, but it would probably be better termed the loss of ignorance. We mourn the loss of our ignorance, and then if we can stay now‐based and grieve that, we can start to reclaim our power from fear of uncertainty. In order to reclaim our power from fear of uncertainty, we have to lose our ignorance. We cannot value certainty and security if we are going to be powerful.

So, there is a grieving process that has to occur, and most people do not really get on with this grieving process until they are in their 50s. It is an occasional person who can reach it in their 40s, and a very rare person who can reach it in their 30s. In your 50s many people lose the ability, thankfully, to imbue the future with a lot of hopeful fantasies. Now, we could call them jaded or cynical, but the truth is, in our 50s we start to surrender our ignorance. The pressures of living forces us to do that. Many people hit their 50s and they don’t undergo this transformation, and so they enter old age as caricatures of their issues. If you look at elderly people who are out‐of‐power, you can have a faint glimmer of who that person really is, but typically they’ve moved into an acting out of their issues that is so complete that it becomes them. If you want motivation to grieve the loss of your ignorance, this is it." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-01-21T09:21:00.000-08:00

"Know that the keys to your bliss are all to be found in the uncertainties you wish to avoid - in the simple uncertainties you face in daily living. Every time you embrace uncertainty, you change the world. What you learn on your spiritual path of reclaiming your power from fear works exponentially to shift the mass consciousness and moves all of humanity forward from a fear-driven existence to a life driven by purpose, intention, and the fearless expression of the unconditional love of which we are all made." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-01-20T11:33:00.000-08:00

"Death does not take away your freedom; neither does it grant you any. Many of you profess to know that you as a soul-self are on an eternal journey, and yet there are those among you who behave as though death is the ultimate loss of your freedom. Those of you who entertain fantasies that death would free you from your problems are encouraged to think again. Death is just a transition like any other, and it will not transport you to a fairyland or freedom from your issues. Death is merely a dissolution of the physical form we call the body. It implies nothing except that we have completed this lifetime. Another lifetime in this classroom awaits us if we have more work to do, and that is all." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-01-19T17:39:00.000-08:00

"The power of faith in the now moment is what allows us to embrace the uncertainty of the now, and to embrace it with a non‐resistance that allows for pain to coexist with joy. We can do this because we recognize that discomfort is always an opportunity to evolve something. The creative principle of faith offers us the possibility of seeing that a single human lifetime is almost undetectable in 15 billion year old Universe. It is this elevated perspective which allows us to grasp that in genuinely creating from a desire for essence, life can be lived more comfortably because we are not living from this hyper‐myopic perspective of this lifetime, expending our priceless life‐force trying to fix whatever we judge to be broken or wrong.

When we are able to elevate our perspective to the level of the divine, to what is shining, to that interconnecting intelligence that moves through all things, we can begin to grasp the nature of divinity as inherent in all that is. Then we can fully embrace growth and evolution without hesitation or reservation because we can perceive that everything we and others experience is moving us toward enlightenment." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-01-18T12:44:00.000-08:00

"Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It’s a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs." ~ Pema Chodron

2011-01-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

"It is impossible to describe “now”. We can certainly agree that there are infinite now moments. Some have relationships between mutual observers and others do not. Perhaps this is how you can come to glean that stillness as the creative principle of faith is the reality of now. When you begin to understand this—that now is actually a description of the most profound nature of being—then in the now, there is nothing to fix, to correct, or to avoid. The now is what it is. No more, no less. It implies nothing about the future, and it remembers nothing about the past.

From this perspective, this higher level of awareness, it is clear to see that we do not need to have any expectation whatsoever of hope. Faith is all about the present moment, and coming to it in a state of non‐resistance to whatever is there. No desperate action is required to correct what is. Even if we are deeply uncomfortable with what is there in present time, we understand that what has already been created cannot be a mistake, and it also cannot be undone. It simply is what it is." ~ Spotted Eagle

On Burning Out

2011-01-16T08:55:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been noticing more and more conversation on the topic of 'burning out'. I am taken with how apt a term this is for what it refers to. Most of us are deeply conditioned to equate quantity and speediness with success. We tend to pour our resources of time, energy, attention, and funds into refining this strategy. And then, when we run out of steam or exhaust ourselves into illness, we wonder what went wrong and hurry to get back on the track as soon as possible.
My teacher Spotted Eagle has much to say about how we use our energy. Here is a sample:

"It is important for you to understand that it is our experience of essence that replenishes our reserves of energy. This might manifest itself as enthusiasm, joyfulness, inspiration, and so forth. You can feel the difference between essence, and the emotional energy of fear, control, domination, and force; these are all about attachment to a certain result. The former create a flow of [essence] feelings that energize our efforts. The latter only exhaust us.
Over the course of a lifetime of preventing what we fear, hiding from what threatens us, or chasing our excitement wave, our ability to create essence grinds gradually to a standstill. The will to create becomes exhausted, and the mind can see no way forward because what it has used as creative fuel—the emotional reaction—has drained us of our will to keep pushing energy. The mind can see clearly that there is no more will to create, and its fear of the uncertain future then becomes magnified. Because the fearful mind that has exhausted its will can see no way forward, it will then come to believe in the futility of its efforts, and this is when we begin to despair."

2011-01-15T10:10:00.000-08:00

"We tend to get spontaneity confused with impulsiveness, but they are very different things. While impulsiveness is all about acting on our reactions, based on the emotional wave of fear or excitement, spontaneity is about the use of the will—the free will—to make a choice based on what is truly there in the now, and without the restraint or influence of fear and issues. When we are able be in the now, choosing from among our options or potentials, basing our choices on essence, we are using the creative principle of spontaneity, and through employing it, we can enter a creative flow." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-01-14T11:01:00.000-08:00

"A human being’s power to fully reflect the truth will be a function of his ability to speak from his heart. If he reflects truth that has been filtered and distorted by the mind’s fear and judgment or fantasies, then only a small fraction of what is true will be conveyed in his communication, and his distortions will dominate what he sees and speaks.
It is judgment that prevents us from being truly heart‐centered. We make up that we know something about what we are judging. Perhaps without realizing it, we have escalated from authentic pain to the artificial, conditioned emotions of shame, blame, guilt, outrage, pity, and/or self-pity. From this place, we can no longer hold all individuals accountable for their reality, and then we must necessarily start looking for a victim.

The moment we have identified a victim—someone whose reality is created by others—then we must also find a perpetrator and a rescuer—these are those who can create and alter the reality of the victim. Once we enter this triangle of victim‐rescuer-perpetrator, we have truly lost contact with our spiritual compass." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-01-13T08:30:00.000-08:00

"To master stillness and the creative principle of faith we must master silence. Silence is important because when the mind and mouth are busy, we cannot be still enough to maintain our connection to the now moment. Silence is the only thing that will allow us to move through fear and contact that profound stillness that lies at the heart of the spiritual experience." ~ Spotted Eagle

2011-01-08T16:04:00.000-08:00

"It is imperative that when we think of truth, that we understand it as more about our truth in this now. Otherwise, we might become confused by believing that there is some sort of universal, ideal, unchanging truth out there, and that when we discover it, well, then we will have arrived at some sort of divine state of perfection. Embodiment makes such a state impossible, even when one is a realized being. Even realized beings are not all-seeing and all-knowing.

The Universe holds her mysteries in what is unrevealed, unformed, and unforeseen. No sentient energy, no matter how evolved or powerful, can never fully know how all the individual choices, and the creation events that result from them will play out on a Universal scale in all of the dimensions of reality." ~ Spotted Eagle

Redefining Genius by Matt Atkins

2010-12-31T17:16:00.000-08:00

Here's another terrific guest posting from Matt Atkins of fearlessstories.com. Happy New Year to you all! - Rebecca

Ever fear that maybe you're just not smart or creative or wily enough to stand out? Too bad you're not a genius. I know. Not everyone can have my luck. But what is genius anyway?

It's solving the problem fast, first, furiously, because even though you didn't have all the information and may have been slightly scientifically unsound, you trusted your experience and intuition enough to put something forward before it was too late.

It's weaving together a winning idea from thin air, in a way nobody else seems to understand, because you saw potential in or sought inspiration from an unexpected place, because you had opened your mind to it.

It's the ability to win a heated debate with the worst parts of yourself, wielding only arguments as simple as "We won't know until we try," "Well, no one else is doing it," and "Why not?" when others around you are losing that debate.

But I've obviously made a grievous mistake in my assessment. These things are as inexplicable from the outside as the feats of any conventional genius, and yet they seem utterly doable by just anyone.

Surely you've had one of these moments. And much like anyone who has ever painted anything once is technically a painter, if you've ever had a moment of genius, you are... a genius yourself! Hot dog!

Blah blah, you have the potential for greatness. You've heard that before. But maybe you'll take it more to heart once you realize that not only is that potential there, it has already been realized multiple times. There's not one good reason to suspect you're armed with only a finite number of masterstrokes.

You have beaten fear before. You are a courageous person. This is not just a possibility, it is the truth. You already have what it takes. You've given it. And that makes you stand out.

-Matt

fearlessstories.com

Living Wholeheartedly - A TED Talk by Brene Brown

2010-12-23T08:52:00.000-08:00

Enjoy this TED talk from Brene Brown on the essential nature of vulnerability. She offers us great insight, wisdom, humor, and humility as she shares her experiences on what it means to live wholeheartedly.

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

2010-12-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

"The present moment and what has been created in the universe has everything in it that you need: everything you need to learn, everything you need to see, everything you actually need to do, which may be nothing at all. Even if we talk about what we need to do, you'll notice that the now has pretty clear choices; we don't have that kind of clarity around these choices the minute we go into the regrettable past or the scary future." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-12-08T11:51:00.000-08:00

"When we speak from our hearts, what that really means, is we are speaking the language of essence. We have to step back and take a breath. We have to say, 'Okay, I know I am attached to the form here, and that is part of what is getting me lit up, and making me want to push energy in a direction.' So, if I step back, and I take a breath, and I see that there is an uncertainty here that is causing me to be afraid, and that is a perception that is causing me to have controlling behavior. And that behavior is prompting me to make certain choices in the way I deal with this—with this other person whom I want something from. Then I can step back further, and say, 'Okay, I know all of that is out-of-power. What is the essence I am really looking for here?' If you have a conversation about your essence and the other's essence, you can come to common ground pretty rapidly when that is the conversation because it opens up to the field of all possibility many possibilities that could be actualized in a compromise.
Compromise is a dirty word for a lot of people. Neutrality is a very important piece of this, and you have to have it, but it is more important that you learn how to have an appropriate compromise. What that means is you are willing to be in conflict—in other words, to not know what you are going to do to resolve this conflict—expressing your essence, and asking for that from the other, 'What is the essence you want here? Here is the essence I am looking for.' Negotiating a form that satisfies everybody’s essence allows for everyone involved to remain authentic, whether or not agreement is achieved." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-12-04T08:41:00.000-08:00

"Essence is sourced in your deep love for certain feeling experiences. It is a focus upon essence that gives the heart what it needs to seek the highest possible expression of your creativity in any present moment."
~ Spotted Eagle

Conditionally Powerful

2010-11-21T15:41:00.000-08:00

"The conditions in the world do not take away your freedom. You may give conditions in the world power over your happiness by fearing them, but they do not have any power you do not offer up to them. Prudence is one thing; catastrophizing is quite another. If you find the Mind busy running through scenarios, or if you find yourself reacting emotionally to what is happening to people you do not even know, it is time to go inward and deal with the issues that are robbing you of your freedom to be in the world with ease." ~ Spotted Eagle

Where's the IKEA Manual for...Life? by Matt Atkinson

2010-11-19T14:51:00.000-08:00

The following is a guest post from Matt Atkinson, editor of fear.less - one of my favorite (& free!) online magazines that shares unique stories of overcoming fear, which, as most of you know, is one of my favorite topics. fear.less is a fresh, diverse, and intelligent forum for anyone interested in connecting with a larger community of inspired creatives. Enjoy.

WHERE'S THE IKEA MANUAL FOR...LIFE?

Life doesn't come with an instruction manual, and most of
its components don't either. But who really enjoys reading
them anyway?

Even if we think we've accepted that sometimes we must
press on without a road map, we still convince ourselves that
maybe we'll get a guide instead. A mentor, someone who's
walked our intended path before, and even if they haven't
concretely charted it down, they can lead us to safety.

Sometimes we don't get that either. Whether we're starting
an experimental book or launching a new business model or
about to enter a tense and difficult conversation, we can
easily end up without the blessing of any sort of direction.
We don't have enough information to reason our way through
comfortably, and our emotions are a mess of doubt and fear.

The apparent answer that I always get is both infuriatingly
simple, and often repeated by people who want to sell us
shoes: "Just do it."

A lot of the apprehension from trying something new comes
from the fear of failure and ridicule - but when you attempt
something no one else around has expertise in, it's difficult for
them to persecute you for being wrong. Failure becomes just a
valuable learning experience, not a crippling catastrophe.

And that's only if you're wrong. For all you know (because you
don't know), you may enjoy a sudden flash of brilliance, like all
human beings are prone to do in times of crisis. You may be right.
You may write the next forever-quoted sentence, start the next
revolution, say the magic passwords that bring a conflict to an
unexpected and peaceful resolution.

But how will you know if you don't just do it?

Fear.less Archives! http://fearlessstories.com/archives/
Fear.less Magazine http://fearlessstories.com/
____________________________________________________

2010-11-18T10:10:00.000-08:00

"Pay attention to the truth that transition marks the death of the old way of being. It is not something we put off until we are certain what to do. People think they have to know exactly what will happen before they embark upon a change, but this is not where we start. Transition begins with identifying the essences, or feeling experiences, that are missing from what we are trying to transform. These missing essences are demanding expression, and this is the reason that the old way of being, doing, and living are no longer working for you." ~ Spotted Eagle

Pattern Recognition & Transformation

2010-11-17T15:51:00.000-08:00

One of the most important, yet undervalued, aspects of the transformational process is in realizing that we cannot transform anything that has not already been created. This may seem self-evident, but, really, is this the quality of awareness we typically bring to the work of making important changes in our lives? Creating substantial transformation requires more presence, vulnerability, and patience than most of us are willing to acknowledge.
It's been my experience that when grappling with the dynamics of big change, we are liable to get stuck in a cycle of mental narrative that goes something like this: "This [job, relationship, health issue, etc.] has got to change. I know I've said it before, but this time will be different. I'll try harder, do more, really apply myself this time because this [job, relationship, health issue, etc.] has got to change..." And so on. We tend to confuse will-power with the power of willingness.
When we are contemplating change it's tempting to fall back into our patterns of reaction and response. Life has a way of revealing its essentially uncertain nature to us when we least expect it, and this can throw us for a loop, to say the least. As a rule, we humans are uncomfortable with the unknown and we struggle to return to the familiar version of things, regardless of how illusory or dull the tale. Or, we convince ourselves that the solution is to tell a better story, one with a happier ending, or a more colorful plot line. Unfortunately, all of these options lead to the same old place. Until we are willing to let go of the story and risk feeling the fear and the pain we try so hard to control, we cannot create anything new.
The way forward hinges irrevocably on noticing in ways both obvious and nuanced that our history is comprised of patterns. Recognizing these patterns is essential if we are to evolve our lives, but how do we do this without creating just another story? It takes courage and discipline to see ourselves clearly, to witness our issues in action, and to break the cycle of inner narrative. The simple truth is that the patterns reveal themselves to us over time as we engage in the hard work of growing our awareness, telling deeper truths, cultivating detachment, and living more authentically.

My teacher Spotted Eagle offers the following wise counsel from his series on transformation. I hope it serves your process as much as it has mine:

"When we are speaking of transformation, we need to realize that we are not talking about creating something out of nothing. Instead, transformation always begins with what is already there. If you want to know what area needs your attention, look for the area where you have the most resistance to what you have already created.

Transformation, at its essence, is about identifying the restrictions we ourselves have placed on our reality. It is really about targeting certain patterns of thinking and behavior for destruction so that these restrictions can be weakened, loosened, and ultimately thrown off. So, we begin our search by examining patterns of thinking, behavior, and perception whose meaning has been lost to us, but whose imprint remains.

If you look at an area of your life that you would like to transform, you must begin by asking yourself questions like these:

- When I compare this area to areas of my life where I am growing and evolving, what is it that is inhibiting my growth in this area?

- What is that wall that I keep bumping into? What threshold do I consistently refuse to cross?

- What is the pattern of what and how I create in this area of my life?

- What is the pattern of my thinking in this area? In other words, what thoughts consistently surface when I am feeling pressure in this area?

- These thoughts that consistently surface: when I scrutinize them, do they hold up to that examination?

- When did this thinking become real for me? What series of events in my life have reinforced this thinking?

- When I encounter events that tend to reinforce my thinking, do I just run with that? Or, am I able to see the trigger event for what it is? Am I able to recognize the issue that is driving my reaction? Can I notice that I have been ripped out of the present moment and tossed into the unresolved emotions I have surrounding this issue?

All transformation occurs in a cycle that must necessarily begin with the death of what we once believed to be true. There can be no transformation without a dramatic shift in our thinking. If it is a transformation we seek, rehashing old thoughts or trying harder will not help us if we continue to employ old concepts, methods, and techniques. It is also true that new ideas we embrace must significantly alter our perceptions, behavior, and choices if they are to operate in our consciousness as new, transformative thinking.
To transform what we have created, we must move beyond the patterns that are the framework of the old reality. We must move into an entirely new frame of reference, one that is capable of actually destroying and replacing the thinking that created what we now want to reform.
So, once we have identified and targeted old thinking, behavior patterns, and perceptions for destruction, what then? The answer is to enter the death cycle willingly and with detachment about when this transition will end.
Remember, transition is a process, not an event. Transition, like all present moments, is a process of discovering an emerging truth, a truth that is very different from what your old thinking was telling you to believe in."

2010-10-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

As I get ready to head north to the beautiful Anderson Valley for a symposium on spiritual leadership with Jennie Marlow, two wisdom quotes come to the surface I thought I might share with you...

"There is no greater gift you can give another or yourself than your neutral witness, the fruit of true compassion." ~ Spotted Eagle

"The heart is a center of great courage and compassion. It is not maudlin, co-dependent, or capable of self-righteousness or self-pity. The heart knows the truth in present time, undistorted by issues and fear. It does not engage in power struggles, manipulation, or avoidance. The heart confronts truth fearlessly, with the intention to be unconditionally loving to the self, and reflecting this back to the other." ~ Grandfather White Elk

See you on the flip side!

An Embarrassing Truth by Colleen McCarthy-Evans

2010-10-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

Please welcome another guest post from my friend Colleen McCarthy-Evans. We often hear about meeting people where they are as a mark of honoring the journeys of others with compassion and without judgment. This is something I continue to learn about in my life. With this piece, Colleen writes beautifully about meeting ourselves where we are. Amen to that!

An Embarrassing Truth?

by Colleen McCarthy-Evans

When we are listened to, without fear or judgment on the part of the listener, Truth emerges…sparkling, shiny, warm and pure as the sun. The Truth raises our basal body temperature, deepens our breathing, and calms a racing heart. Truth kills viruses and unwanted bacteria, unblocks clogged arteries, and improves circulation to our extremities. Truth breaks up knotted muscles and cellulite. Truth seeps into our every pore and alters our DNA. Truth even speeds up our species’ evolution.

Okay, I’m not 100% sure all that is true, but from now on…I’m making a pledge to Truth-Telling. If someone is kind enough to offer his or her fearless, non-judgmental listening, I believe the most respectful thing I can do in return is offer the Truth.

So, Dear Listener, since you appear to still be listening, I will honor you with a little Truth, one that I discovered a couple of weeks ago. A Truth, which was difficult for me to admit to myself, and is even scarier to admit to you. Okay, here goes:

I think I love my life.

I feel a little silly saying that, because if you know me at all, you know just how imperfect my little life is, and that I am not one of those people for whom things have somehow all worked out amazingly well, such that I am shouting from an award-winning rooftop that I love my prize-winning life. No, I’m whispering it from the trenches, that I love this life that doesn’t quite measure up.

Yep, I love my life. In spite of the fact that if there really were a scale that measured how things look when they’ve worked out for someone, my life would probably call in sick on weigh-in day to avoid embarrassment.

I wake up most days facing personal and collective time bombs that are present in my life, which should they explode, would likely bring heaps of suffering on my head and others’. And yet, I actually just love this goofy life. Every day I pull myself up by my bootstraps. I check in with myself and agree to make a go of the day. I make mistakes. Sometimes big mistakes. Then I do a little better the next day.

Or not.

I guess this is just my style, my life-style!

Thirty-five years ago, I left my family of origin at seventeen, to make a life of meaning for myself. I didn’t have much in the way of resources, and yet, it seems I’ve been fairly resourceful after all. I have created a life. And it has great meaning for me. And I do it again, every day. Apparently, I really love it. I suppose I could feel shame about it instead, but what would be the fun in that? And of course there are a few things that have actually worked out okay so far. Sometimes they get overshadowed by the other things that have me quaking in those boots with straps that I pull myself up by daily.

So, I am officially lowering the bar, to right where I measure up. It lands at about level with my heart, four feet off the ground. Seems like just the right height for a life-measuring bar, not to mention perfect for a joyful and raucous game of “I’ve Lowered the Bar Limbo!” Hey! Why don’t you join me? Let’s dance and play!

I suspect that many of you are like me, secret admirers of the life you have created. We blow it kisses in the moonlight. We want to marry it and bear its children. We want to be buried next to it on a gentle knoll overlooking a gurgling brook. But we’re just a little bit embarrassed to admit it. It’s okay. It’s even better than okay. It’s lovable.

Anyway, that’s my story, and I seem to be sticking to it.

Thanks so much for listening. And if by chance at your next check-up you learn that your blood pressure has inexplicably lowered, maybe we are evolving after all, in spite of evidence that might be presented to the contrary.

2010-10-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

"Other people do not take away your freedom. If you feel rejected, suffocated, angry, frustrated, or resigned about a relationship, it is time to examine your attachment to maintaining that relationship in its current form. If you cannot feel total freedom in your relationship, then there is a mechanism by which you are sacrificing authenticity, and that mechanism is fear. It starts when we are attached to having the relationship be a certain way, and then when the other does not react favorably to something in us - something that is essence rich for us - and if the other person threatens the withdrawal of affection, we adapt with inauthentic behavior, perceptions, and choices. In our effort to hang onto the relationship, we cover up what is real, bury what is conflicted, and protect ourselves through this escalating process of hiding the real self. Here we find a cage of our own devising." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-09-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

"Adaptability is the ability to fit our strategies to the conditions we face. Adaptability implies that we are able to modify something to make it more suitable to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. For many of you, this means that you must learn how to admit it when the universe is not backing your plans, methods, and schemes. It is often as simple as recognizing that, for some reason, the universe would prefer you do something differently. Where this is most evident is when we seek to specialize in or do something that is not supportable under the present circumstances. If we are unable to adapt when the form of what we want is not supportable, we lose touch with the reason we want anything at all, and that is the essence feelings that we hold in our hearts. Adaptability allows us to let go of what tied us to an old dream, and to take up the new trail marked by our essences." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-09-06T16:55:00.001-07:00

"If I try to control you, in that intent to control you, I lose my freedom...my freedom is to let you be whatever you are." ~ Don Miguel Ruiz

2010-09-05T11:53:00.000-07:00

"If you will engage in the learning process that is relationship, you will embark on a journey that leads toward the self-recognition of your own divinity. The road to divinity is paved with many lessons, and it is the most challenging journey you will ever undertake. It will take from you everything that is inauthentic, and it will demand from you a level of consciousness that you can barely imagine. We have to remember, to give ourselves stamina, that the road to divinity is about graduating from the classroom about fear and winning the ultimate prize: reclamation of your soul self, reflected and embraced in the light of another." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-09-04T09:07:00.000-07:00

"There is always some place of connection with another human being. You’ll find it in the essences, because a desire for essence is in every human being. Now, he may be completely divorced from his desire for essence—divorced from his soul, divorced from the love that he is—and we can have compassion when we see that. We can see what it would take for someone to restore that connection. Compassion is being aware of what would it take for a person who is that conditioned, that frightened, and that insecure, to reconnect with himself. To see that is an act of compassion. To see what it would take for a person who has experienced great fear and loss to realize that he has 100% capacity to create an essence-rich life, even though many forms may not be accessible to him—may not be actualizable." ~ Spotted Eagle

There are few gifts more rare in times of crisis than bearing neutral witness to the emotional environment and to have bone-neutral compassion for others.

2010-09-02T17:47:00.000-07:00

Like many of you, I've been putting a lot of time and attention into working on cultivating emotional awareness and on my fears & issues. I recently came across this teaching from Spotted Eagle and thought it could be useful to share.

"Without being in present time, we cannot see what is in the now with any degree of clarity. This is why our choices become muddled by excitement, fear, and issues. The choices we make from these things lead us further away from our authenticity and our essence. The flow eventually ceases to be, and we find ourselves riding our emotional waves in the absence of any other thing that feels like movement. This is how our objectivity becomes mired in distortion, and the outcome is that we start pushing energy in order to create. After a lifetime of living in this way, our emotional, physical, spiritual, and other resources are likely to become depleted. We may feel like our lives have hit a dead end, and if this happens, it will probably be characterized by whatever attachment to an outcome we still find ourselves clinging to - some outcome in which we are continuing to invest energy, even though it gives us little or no return.

Remember this: that through your choices, you transform your environment, and in turn, your environment plays an enormous role in influencing your patterns of perception, behavior, and choice. You are, in effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy, creating your world through the use of your will. So the question is this: just how free from fear and issues is your will?" ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-09-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

"Authentic vision is not a hope for some future result. Instead it is an ever-evolving dream for feeling experiences that are lived rather than achieved. Placing our focus on the feeling experience - on essence - is what allows the creation of forms that are birthed from a desire for that essence. And because our focus is not on form, there is no attachment to or longing for a certain future outcome. The human creative principle of faith - faith in the present moment and whatever is truly there - is that very detachment that leads to a state of being where joyfulness and neutrality are part of every now moment, however painful it may be. When we are truly allowing of what is in present time, this is when our attachments may dissolve, and our experience of essence, which is a part of every now, becomes apparent to us." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-08-29T19:13:00.000-07:00

I've frequently had the thought that, in spite of my advancing age, I feel much the same as I did when I was a kid. Here's something from Jill Bolte Taylor's fascinating book My Stroke of Insight which addresses this phenomenon:

"Most of the different types of cells in our body die and are replaced every few weeks or months. However, neurons, the primary cell of the nervous system, do not multiply (for the most part) after we are born. That means that the majority of the neurons in your brain today are as old as you are. This longevity of the neurons partially accounts for why we feel pretty much the same on the inside at the age of ten as we do at age thirty or seventy-seven. The cells in our brain are the same, but over time their connections change based upon their/our experience."

Pardon the pun, but doesn't that just blow your mind?

2010-08-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

"When a human being is impatient, he can spend a great deal of energy acting prematurely based on his emotional reactions. He is reacting, so he does not see the now with clarity. His impatience unconsciously makes resolution of his emotions his goal, and so he acts to create something that will give him the illusion of security.

It is also true that, when a human being hesitates out of fear of making a mistake, timing and opportunity emerge in a now, but his awareness is distracted by his emotional reactions, and so the emerging truths and opportunities are not visible to him." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-08-28T12:25:00.000-07:00

"If you are to move into your full power, you must detach from the fantasy that you can find and arrest in time anything you once held to be true. For example, let's look at religion. Religious icons will offer up their understanding of the truth in the present moment in which they held it. Some time later, we read or hear what they said, or what the author understands was said. If we are believers, we will start to filter out the fact that these doctrines have taken what was once held as true - what was perhaps once the truth - and arrested them in a cultural, geographical, and historical context that cannot evolve because this truth has been codified and thereby frozen in time. Why do humans do this? For the same reason they do most everything they do: because it gives them the illusion of certainty, and medicates their fear of uncertainty." ~ Spotted Eagle

Spiritual Sanctuary

2010-08-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

"Spiritual sanctuary is being present in the now. If we are not imagining things, if we are not imposing fantasies - morbid ones or happy ones - on reality; if we are really present with what is, able to feel our authentic pain without escalating it into the artificial, conditioned emotions; if we are able to exercise our freedom of choice and all of the other human creative powers in a now, we automatically have sanctuary.

It is when we leave the now that we destroy our own sanctuary because what we connect to is not real. Reality cannot be found in any moment other than the one you are in. The Mind is an imaginer. If we place the imagination in service of things that are not part of the now moment, it starts to serve our issues. And it serves our fears, and it serve our desire to escape from real life. As such, it cannot be in-power." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-08-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

"To master the human creative principle of faith, we must master silence. Silence is important because when the mind and the mouth are busy, we cannot be still enough to maintain our connection to the now moment. Silence is the only thing that will allow us to move through fear and contact that profound stillness that lies at the heart of the spiritual experience." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-08-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

"If we are to move into full power, we must gain dominion over the fearful mind that is obsessed with 'answers' - with hunting down what is uncertain, making a decision, and thereby killing the power of the unknown to lead us into further inquiry. A willing heart allows the truth to emerge and evolve. It cultivates the openness required to travel upon a current of awareness into uncharted territory. It knows instinctively that if we are seeking truth, it will not likely be found in the answers we already have." ~ Spotted Eagle

Red Flags

2010-08-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

"Every energy in the Universe is composed of divine love. It is difficult for humans to grasp this, that every thing - war, pestilence, famine, murder - that all these things could be composed of divine love. It makes no sense, unless we see all that happens in the framework of a teaching, an opportunity to be whole.

When we look on the individual scale instead of the global one, we can see that as we reflect upon our lives, whenever we were about to make a choice that proved to be disastrous, it was usually as a result of our blindness, our fantasies, or our unwillingness to be truthful with ourselves. Usually, when we are in these situations, where we are about to make these kinds of choices, red flags are waving frantically, but we refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the alert. Instead, we plunge forward, heedless of the warnings that were right in our faces. Why? Because we were resistant to the truth of the now, and this made us unobservant or blind to what we were about to choose. Our wills simply were not free of fear and resistance in that now.

Very often, the truth first presents itself as a subtle pressure that increases over time. Recall, right now, a close personal relationship that has ended. When you examine it, you can see the truth about yourself and the other in relationship, and that this truth was present from the very beginning as a subtle pressure that was ignored. Simply put, it is our fear of uncertainty that presents us with a constant, daily pressure, to disconnect from the love that we are. It is presence and neutrality that can return us to balance, to compassion, and authenticity. This is the human journey." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-08-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

"If you are really after enlightenment, it is work! It takes time. It takes a devotion of energy. It takes courage. It takes willingness. And there is no modality that can give you these things. So don't give your power away to a modality because then, whatever you give your power to will have the power and not you. So, if you are following a philosophy or applying a modality in an effort to evolve spiritually, how do you tell if it is working or not? Over time you will know. A day, a week, or even a month is not long enough. See if after a year's time your life has undergone the shifts that you are after.

That you are here shows that you are after enlightenment, not positive thinking or different programs or belief systems. You are after a level of presence that is so powerful that it transcends thought. No higher self. Just the ability to the 100% present with what is, creating in real time from your desire for essence. This is what you are all after. So don't give your power away. If you are applying a modality or following a philosophy, you need to ask yourself: is this really helping me to transcend my thinking? You can fool around at a surface level for decades and never have a true and sustainable transformation in your life, never truly move through the white-hot core of your issues. You need to realize that the choice is and always has been yours and yours alone to make." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-08-10T18:15:00.000-07:00

"Having the answer does not create your reality. This is the illusion of a final and absolute truth. It can do terrible damage, as anyone who has suffered under the tyranny of the self-righteous knows. There is nothing more dangerous and destructive to yourself and those about you than believing you are right, or that yours is the only or absolute truth. When you believe you are a champion of the singular truth, it can only distort what you see and do." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-08-09T17:34:00.000-07:00

"Negative thinking does not create your reality. How many times have you despaired, only to discover shortly thereafter that what you wanted in your heart-of-hearts just arrived at your doorstep? To fear negative thoughts or to deny them is not a path to wisdom. Negative thoughts, when observed rather than followed, are an excellent source of information about your structures of decisions and thinking, and can be extremely useful in identifying their components. They represent an enormous opportunity for self-awareness, and they are an excellent means of reclaiming power from fear." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-08-06T16:43:00.000-07:00

"Positive thinking does not create your reality. Positive thinking, like negative thinking, has nothing to do with being present with the evolving truth in present time. It is based on fear of what seems negative and this is the reason it has no power to break your attachment to your conditioning. If you must think 'positively,' you cannot be authentic when you have painful emotions or when the emerging truth is unpleasant. Positive and negative are really descriptions of emotional responses." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-08-04T15:49:00.000-07:00

"Affirmations do not create your reality. Affirmations are an illusion of faith. Like much positive thinking, they are a mask for fear. The trouble is, if you do not identify and overcome the fear beneath them, the affirmation is like a band aid over a festering sore. No healing can take place if the underlying fear is allowed to remain. What they are good for, however, is a way to examine what you fear. In most cases, each affirmation you want to speak is a reaction, a fear that what you do not want might come to pass. From that perspective, the affirmations to which you find yourself attracted are useful insights when you are exploring your beliefs and judgments." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-08-02T17:34:00.000-07:00

"To transform opposition into paradox is to allow both sides of an issue, both pairs of opposites, to exist in equal dignity and worth." ~ Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche

2010-08-01T14:32:00.000-07:00

"We need to create relationships that occur in the sacred space between us. This means that we treat what goes on between us as holy, and treat the relationship itself as something that occurs on sacred ground. In order to create a sacred relationship, we have to be much more responsible for our choices, and chose co-relaters who are capable of sustaining the level of consciousness that sacred relationships demand. And when we are in relationship to those who are not capable, we have choices that must be made. Many casual and business relationships - especially relationships with our families - are made with those who are unconscious, and we must be cognizant of this and take it into account. In these kinds of relationships, we know we can expect domination and subservience to assert itself, and that this will be demanding of us that we not succumb to it, no matter what the other person is doing."

~ Spotted Eagle

The Heart's Desire

2010-07-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

After all these years, I still have a lot to learn about how to resolve conflicts in a manner that doesn't play into the domination / subservience model which is my conditioned default position when I am feeling especially threatened emotionally. I offer the following from my teacher Spotted Eagle on essence and conflict resolution:

"For the average person, when you say, 'come from your heart,' they think that you are talking about being nice or sentimental, or even maudlin. When we are talking about conflict resolution, an extremely important piece to notice is that what the heart is there for is to be a vessel that guards our desire for essence. That is its primary function; to give us the courage to stand in the truth that everything we desire in form is really based on the desire to experience essence. It's a very interesting feature of people who know how to resolve conflict that they don't focus on the form because they understand that the form is always ego-driven or fear-driven; which are in fact are one and the same. When we are in conflict, if we can identify the essence we desire instead of the form we think we want, and then make the conversation between our self and the other about the gap between the essence we have now and the essence we want to experience, we are then truly coming from the heart. This is a very different conversation than the form-based conversation which is always about control...controlling the outcome, controlling the form the outcome takes, and controlling the timing.

When we speak from our hearts, what that really means is that we are speaking the language of essence. We have to step back and take a breath. We have to say, 'Okay, I know I am attached to the form here, and that is part of what is getting me lit up, and making me want to push energy in a direction.' So, if I step back and I take a breath, and I see that there is an uncertainty here that is causing me to be afraid, and that is a perception that is causing me to have controlling behavior. And that behavior is prompting me to make certain choices in the way I deal with this - with this other person from whom I want something. Then I can step back further and say, 'Okay, I know all of that is out-of-power. What is the essence I am really looking for here?' A conversation like this about your essence and the other's essence can bring you both to common ground pretty rapidly because it opens up to the field of all possibility many possibilities that could be actualized in a compromise.

Compromise is a troubling word for many people. What is valuable to keep in mind is while neutrality is an important component of healthy conflict resolution, it is more important to learn how to have an appropriate compromise. What that means is you are willing to be in conflict - in other words, to not know what you are going to do to resolve this conflict - expressing your essence, and asking for that from the other, 'What is the essence you want here? Here is the essence I am looking for.' This is how to negotiate a conflict with essence as the compass, and mutual satisfaction as the result."

2010-07-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

"Whatever it is that you think you want, what you're really after is the feeling that you think this thing will give you." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-07-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

"In Spirit, there is no such thing as an error in the way the Universe creates itself, or what you create as your part of this creation. What is created in the Universe cannot be in error. What is created cannot be a mistake. The truth is that if your consciousness was capable of creating anything differently in any present moment, this is indeed what it would create. Your so-called mistakes may not please you, but they are enormous opportunities for growth and change, and if you did not need to grow and change, these so-called mistakes would not be part of your experience. To resist your opportunities for growth is, in reality, to resist becoming the person who could live the life you long for in your heart." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-07-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

"Perception is the response of consciousness to what is being presented. This response can take infinite forms, but when we look at it in this context, we can notice immediately that most of what we perceive is a choice we make to view or process what is being presented in a certain way. We can also realize that what is being presented to us is never whole. This is because what is being presented to us is always fractionalized, either by the limitation of our senses, or the limitation of our consciousness in that moment." ~ Spotted Eagle

This is not a problem.

2010-07-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

"To find faith is to locate it within our hearts, within the present moment, within the crisis or the ecstasy, within our hopes or disappointments, within our failures as well as our successes. In short, there is a spiritual path, and we are on it: sacred tourists, journeying as an exercise in our own evolution, our understanding of ourselves, and the actualization of whatever possibilities are obvious to us in the present moment." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-07-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

"Security is not liberating. You will likely always crave it on some level, but the illusion of security is the mortal enemy of your freedom. It is narcotic to the human psyche, and the Mind is willing to sacrifice almost anything to have it. It is especially important that you recognize how your core existential fears translate to your craving for this drug, and when you see that, you might then be able to undergo a successful withdrawal process." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-07-21T16:34:00.000-07:00

"Stop viewing the disease as the enemy or the body as the betrayer. Healing really is about giving the body an opportunity to express itself in a different way. There is another way, albeit an often more difficult one, to perceive the concept of health...that ultimately, the dance with our spirituality means that we have to dance with life in the same way we have to dance with death. Even as we fully engage in life, it is our seeing death as the enemy that makes it such a powerful force for what we fear." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-07-19T17:23:00.000-07:00

"When we seek to transform the body, we must begin our quest in the psyche, where structures in our thinking direct the body to express what the Mind holds to be true." ~ Spotted Eagle

2010-07-17T16:42:00.000-07:00

"Fear collapses the field of all possibility into a singular actuality of our fear and judgment. Fear might be best described as a place where our energy is frozen, and therefore unable to flow. When we do things out of fear, it is easy to notice that these activities consume a great deal of energy, but little or no energy comes back." ~ Grandfather White Elk