~something said~

"I am never closer,

more tightly held by God,

than when I am in the midst

of chaos."

Rewards for Spiritual Practice

I don’t know about you, but for nearly my entire life, whenever I found myself praying, it was always when I was in need of something. Maybe it was for a job I was hoping to get or for a family member who was sick. I would pray for all things…big and small, as if praying was the avenue in which God decided who got what. I had ideas that if you prayed more or for longer, than somehow those prayers would be answered. This philosophy treads a little close to superstition. If God is counting how many prayers I make and for how long, what else is He counting on? Will it please Him if I burn candles, light incense or sit on my head upside down? The idea that we are rewarded for our spiritual practice is not only absurd but also a little bit pitiful. Pleading, bartering and demanding things of God is not prayer but the ego feeling out of control. The ego thinks that God is rational like itself, only 1000 times more. The ego wishes to relate to the mind of God…as if God had a mind. This antiquated idea of God as human – but only greater, needs to be relinquished. We have all heard that we are made in the likeness of God. And as fools, we believed that God looked and acted just like us. We are loving, but God is all loving. We are vengeful, but God is all vengeful. How egotistical of us to assume that the likeness of God that we all are – or have the potential to be- has anything to do with our physical form? I am beginning to understand that the mind and the ego cannot know God because God is a mystical experience that is saved for the soul.

So back to praying. If we cannot beg, plead and barter with God through our prayers, what good are they? What happens when two people, praying to the same God (the only God) are praying for two different outcomes? Surely, one will be disappointed. Is this because one person did not pray enough? Long enough? Light the right candles? Burn the sweetest incense? No. God does not reward or punish for our spiritual practice. The purpose of prayer, as I see it, is to connect with God, ask for guidance, listen and follow that guidance and to be assisted through the chaos that most likely brought us to pray in the first place. Not to remove the chaos, but to be able to endure it. Trust me, when your world gets turned upside down through any kind of loss, pain or suffering, no human can be responsible for such a shift in your life. Chaos is God re-ordering your life. Chaos is divinity in action. Chaos is life rebirthing itself. Destruction is necessary for creation to start fresh.

Now when I pray, I think it is absurd to ask for anything at all. God knows exactly what I need. And I always get exactly that…what I need and not necessary want. Instead, I pray to be illuminated in the areas of my life that I cannot see clearly. Places where I think I have been abandoned or where I have lost my gratitude. I pray to hold my centre. I pray to hold my centre when I am spinning and chaos is all around. In those moments, never am I closer with God.

~Something Said~

"In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your piece of heart. As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities and there is no joy in things that do not exist."

- Thomas Merton

[waiting]

If I had to wait another year

to know your love

I could wait a hundred more

to know it like no other.

 

If I had to wait another month

to feel your body

I could wait a thousand more

to memorize every touch.

 

If I had to wait another day

to hold your hand

I could wait a million more

to hold so tight as to never let go.

 

If I had to wait another second

to live my life without you

I could not endure a single more

of my heartbeats,

fluttering,

beating,

out of synch with yours.

 

 

Living Like Anything Is Possible

Pushing the boundaries of what you believe to be true and possible allow for more possibilities and a wider range of events/persons/things to enter into your life. Did you know that what you believe to be true is a choice? It is a choice made from facts, experiences and things that you have witnessed. But it is also made up of ideas you were told and taken on as true. Your belief system is created from your ideas of what you wish to be or hope to be. They are intangibles that you cannot prove but believe in otherwise. Perhaps because of the fear of being humiliated, you may not freely admit to others every item in your belief system. Or simply because you could not prove them, but know intuitively they are true. But make no mistake, what you believe in is a choice, created from provable and non-provable elements. The interesting idea about belief is that you choose how much to believe in and how far to take it. You define the boundaries of what is true for you. If you believe that you could intend a cup of coffee to be brought to you some time today, but not a twenty-dollar bill, then that is a definition of the boundaries of your reality. It is a your choice.

As long as I can remember, I have always believed that anything and everything is possible. Even when all surrounding evidence was pointing to the contrary, I still held on to my idea of living in a world of infinite possibilities. To that point, if everything you believed in required no faith, it would hardly be considered a belief at all but a fact. The common phrase, “ I will believe it when I see it” creates a reality of finite options. I prefer the phrase, “ I will see it when I believe it” because this creates a world of infinite possibilities. It is limited only by what we can dream for ourselves. Buddha taught us that the material world is one of illusion and our role is to be in the world but not of the world. Believing that anything is possible, even when current circumstances challenge that belief ultimately declare that you are choosing to see past the illusion. Limitations and scarcities of any kind are nothing but constructs of the mind (which lives in illusion of time and space) and are created from a limited perception. A way to challenge that perception is to change your perspective from the Imagined Truth of the mind, to the Apparent Truth of judgment free data (what actually is) to the Actual Truth: God is always giving. There is more than enough for everyone. We are all connected. By Divine design, everything is possible because for the Universe, nothing is impossible. The soul yearns to create and experience more than what your mind can imagine for yourself. Connect with your interior world. Reflect deeply on your true nature and let the contextual field of infinite possibilities be the back drop of your life.

[jettison]

I threw it out

more came back.

 

I covered it up

it became unearthed.

 

I threw it overboard

it swam to shore.

 

I abandoned it

more found its way home.

 

I chucked it to the wind

the wind blew it my way.

 

I dumped it by the road

it was back at my side.

 

I discarded it

it returned to the fold.

 

   Give away what you desire/ get more back in return/ 

   cause another to have/ what you don’t have/

   and learn how it was always in your hands

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Forgive Or Not To Forgive?

There are two ideas that affect my relationship to forgiveness. The first is the concept that we, as souls, contracted everything we experience here on Earth. Prior to being born on Earth, we lovingly made sacred contracts with all other souls to experience the myriad of things/events/people in our lives. Taken from the parable The Little Soul and the Sun, even the most tragic and painful of experiences were agreed upon by those involved to allow us to experientially know a particular part of Divinity. For example, as a Little Soul, if we wanted to experience forgiveness to truly understand it, on Earth, we would experience an event that would require us to forgive. This parable teaches us that every thing that we experience is perfect because we have chosen it. It is allowing us to know Who We Really Are. The second concept is tied to the idea that We Are All One. When we understand that our will and God’s Will are one and the same, we begin to realize that every job we take, every person we meet and every other thing we do is exactly what we should be doing because we are doing it. How can we do something that is not part of the big plan for us? How could we make a move that turns out to be wrong or a mistake? We cannot because there is nothing that we can do outside the umbrella of God. God is everywhere and in everything. We cannot choose something or create something that is not a part of the perfect plan- which is tailored made for us.

Nothing gets by God. And every action is God’s Will in action. It is perfect.

When we digest these two ideas about Life’s perfection – 1) everything being agreed upon between souls and 2) our actions/creations are always aligned with our soul’s journey and exactly what God would want for us, why would there be any need for forgiveness?

Forgiveness is intended to move past how others have done us wrong. How can anything be wrong in God’s perfection? The need to forgive someone is truly a selfish act. It is for the person forgiving and not for the one “needing” forgiveness. When we forgive someone, it is our demonstration to the world that we are ready to move on. What we have done essentially is given another meaning to the event. At first it caused us pain, now we are moving past pain and forgiving. Both are choices. And both decisions are our own definitions of right and wrong, in a particular moment. When we learn that there is no one to forgive, we move from a place of victimhood to a place of deeper understanding. Everything is happening perfectly because we have co-created it with Life and everything is an expression of God.

[entanglement]

it has taken some time

to untangle my limbs from yours

held onto your hand for longer than I should.

Aches, grip clinging to hold us together.

 

it has taken some getting used to

not hearing the sound of your voice

warm and pressed into my ear.

Burns, words believed but untrue.

 

I’ve had to untie myself from the thoughts

that bind me to you

to sever the link that kept you close.

Hurts, connection that no longer serves.

Thy Will Be Done

We are individuations of the Whole. If we dipped a cup into the ocean, God being the ocean, we represent the cup. We are made up of the same stuff as the Divine. I have been wrestling with trying to figure out the difference between my will and God’s will. Our current construct is that God is outside of us. That God is separate from us. The new paradigm is that God is within us. God and everything in the Universe is connected. We Are All One. If we are all one, how can my will be different than God’s? How could little old me want something for myself that God does not want for me? It is not possible. Whatever I choose to create, be or experience is what God wants to create, be and experience because ‘We Are All One’. My will is God’s Will. Better yet, God’s Will is my will. As individuations of the Whole, and living in the illusion of separateness, we have what seems like free will. We are free to choose anything we want. The catch: Nothing that we choose can be different than what God would choose. How could it be? We Are All One. CWG describes this as a Divine Dichotomy – two apparent contrasting ideas, simultaneously being true. We have free will and God’s Will is all there is.

At times, we get confused about which direction to take. We cannot decide what to create next. This confusion is often a result of our relying too heavily on our ego. Letting go and letting God is a way of getting the ego out of the way. I often use the term ‘Thy Will be done”. Under the old paradigm, this suggested that God (outside of us) will decide what should happen. Under the new paradigm (God is within us), ‘Thy Will be done’ is a way to ask the ego to step aside. With the ego disregarded, we can become clearer as to the Will of God. Or better yet, we become better attuned to what our will desires.

The ego has nothing to do with your soul and everything to do with your mind. Dis-identifying with the ego allows for your will and your true intention to create. Often we make choices and create circumstances out of what our ego would like. When we live from our ego, we live a life that is often less than ideal. Then we complain about what we have created and blame it on another person, place or thing. Or we blame God. Under this new construct of Divinity, we are fully responsible for our lives. Some may shy away from this responsibility, but once you understand this truth, you can no longer live unconsciously.

A powerful realization I am coming to terms with is this: The Universe is always creating. Life is always giving. God is always saying yes. Why would it be any other way? To live consciously, means to accept these terms of Divinity and to create from our Higher Selves. Our ego often makes choices based on conditions we were taught. Ideas like there is not enough and I am separate from others and God. When we create from this perspective, from fear, we ultimately create more of what we do not want. When we are experiencing conditions that we do not favor- perhaps a job we dislike, a relationship that no longer serves us or any other condition we do not enjoy, I suggest checking your true intention. Your true intention or your grounding belief creates your reality. Try bending your mind around this new understanding of God. Be accountable for your life and everything in it. Consciously choose what you want to experience. Change your current perceptions to fit your conscious creation. And in turn, know your own Divinity.

~something said~

"Your history is not a healer

because healing cannot be reasoned."

[Dark Beauty]

only in the moonlight

can you see her form

her subtle shapes, contours

soft, rolling edges

only slightly torn

 

you may catch a glimpse

of her chilling beauty

only in the light of night

obscure, expansive and enticing

forcing to follow, pursue and bite

 

out of a dark so deep

your eyes must adjust to see

a dark luminosity

that is complex and less naïve

 

an aesthetic so bold

so inviting

it reaches a depth unknown

teeming with words, music and art

an expression desperate to be shown

 

in the darkness

lies a strange kind of beauty

beckoning to be seen

open your mind

to the magic that lifts the soul, heals the heart

transforming the dark night into a dream

Dark Night of the Soul

A dark night of the soul is a period in our lives in which we may experience great sadness, loss, anxiety or fear. It is often accompanied by a sort of stagnation – a time when nothing seems to take shape, plans fall away, creativity is stiffened and life seemingly slows down. It is a time when the potential to become influenced by our daimonic energy is great. The daimon- in Ancient Greece- was a term to describe an unnamed spirit that pushes us to our fates. This energy is most noticeable in this liminal space – the threshold of being not quite in and not all the way out. During the dark night of the soul, we are forced to let go and let God. Likened to a time of incubation and transformation, this ebb of life creates a space to extend past our own parameters and allow for greater possibilities to take shape. When nothing is seemingly going right in our lives, we are forced to stop and let things be. In our stillness, we may become open to opportunities, interests and goals we were otherwise too distracted to acknowledge or give energy to grow.

Contemporary psychology usually focuses on shining a bright light onto our pain and sadness. It searches to uncover, label and find quick resolution to our problems. I suggest using this time to become familiar with your darkness. Depression and sadness is inherent to life and allows us to know our own happiness and livelihood. A dark night of the soul has been described as a black sun in our lives and it can change how we see things. The light of this dark sun shows us the shadows, depths and complexities of life that the naïve solar light overlooks. In our darkness, we can become less one-dimensional and grow into a person with more depth – someone worth listening, knowing and loving in both dark and light. A dark night takes you deeper than an emotion. Beneath depression or a dark mood exists a space. When we go down through it, we soon find ourselves beneath it – where it no longer exists.

I suggest that this dark night is an opportunity. If you allow the ego to fall away and reconnect with Life, you will realize that both the ebb and flow of Life is Life in motion. We are always moving forward. Take a moment to look around you. Forget who you think you are. Disregard who you thought you would be. Let go of all external identities and embrace your scintilla – the spark that lies at the heart of every person. It is the spark of the Divinity reminding you of Who You Really Are. Trust in it.

[liminal spaces]

Out on the lash

Just before the next edge

There is a space

 

Having not quite left

And just about to enter

There is a room

 

Outside, there is a great light

Inside, a soft kind of dark

And in between the two

A deep shade of grey

Known only in this place

 

Balanced in between this threshold

Of being not quite in

And not all the way out

Allows for a peripheral view

And a chance to be still

To take stock of where you are

In order to decide

Who you will be

 

Limited only in space

Liminal spaces

Offer endless possibilities 

Acceptance Allows For Change

For most of my life, I did not appreciate the power and influence of thoughts. I grew up with a mother who’s first name could have been Pollyanna, but never applied the idea of positive thinking to my life the way she did. For the most part, it felt fake and a little forced to think that ‘all will be well’ when things around were falling apart. One of the principles of The Secret is to think wonderful things into your life. Prosperity, love and abundance can be drawn into your life through the Law of Attraction by your thoughts. The one caveat being: you must truly believe that what is being thought is possible. Not only possible but absolutely true. That is where I found a huge disconnect between principle and practice. How can we believe in prosperity when we have no money or are deeply in debt? How can we know romantic love when no one is around to love us? The idea of The Secret is to think to yourself over and over what you wish for until you start to believe that it will be manifested. The ‘fake it until you make it’ idea sits uneasy with me because it is seeded in an untruth. I do not believe in sugar coating what is or thinking that lemons must be turned into lemonade. Sometimes you just have lemons.

So how do we change our current situation? I think bringing about change starts with something simple. Acceptance. Truly accept something for what it is. Then and only then can we decide to change it. People fear that by doing this, they will passively allow any condition to remain. What really happens is that we see things what they truly are – meaningless. When we accept things for the way they are, we stop labeling them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Without these subjective, ever changing labels of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, we let people, circumstances and events just be. We can then start to think them into whatever we choose. If you deem your career as uninspiring and awful, your forced positive thoughts will have little effect because your true belief is that your career is crappy. The thought that is genuinely believed will create your reality. Stop seeing your financial situation as negative and simply as a physical amount of money. Then go about the business of thinking prosperity into your life.

Remember, everything is meaningless save for the meaning we give it. When we change our minds about something, what we see begins to change. I challenge you to create something anew in your life after fully accepting it as it is. Watch your reality rearrange itself to reinforce and reflect what you decide life to be. In that moment, you are creator. Once you experience your ability to create, you are free to design anything. Anything and everything is possible.

[wordy]

words tried to manipulate

change something that was not there

words tried to beg and plea

persuade something already convinced

words tried to lash out in anger

hurt something that could not be harmed

words tried patience and understanding

love something that was already gone

words got in the way

could not shorten the space

the g a p

between

you and me

Becoming Familiar with Being

What have you been up to lately? Whenever someone asks me this question, my answer is usually a recitation of things that I have been doing. We love spending our time doing things and all of our attention is focused on the next thing to be done. We go to work, hang out with friends, spend time shopping, work out at the gym and clean our houses. We get a sense of accomplishment and usefulness by keeping busy. Doing is an activity found in the mind. The ego defines itself by our past actions and our anticipated ones of the future. While our ego is busy ‘doing’, our soul is longing to be.

When have you spent some time just being? Being allows us to know our compassion, patience, happiness and joy. When we permit ourselves the time to be still, we become attuned to who we really are. There are no steps to happiness. You can only be happy. When we stand in our ‘beingness’ of being happy, we are telling the Universe what we are. The Universe responds with experiences that confirm our good feelings. We get more than we can handle. When we are still, we soak in the moment and root ourselves more deeply in Life. We relax into the moment and accept it as is. We learn that there is nothing that we have to do, nothing that must be said and no one to forgive.

I have experienced times in my life when, by all outward appearances, not much has been going on. In fact, I have recently acknowledged my own ‘dark night of the soul’ – a period of incubation, transition and spiritual alchemy that forces a person to let go and let God. While my external experiences are seemingly sluggish and uninspired, my internal world is being reshaped, reconfigured and reborn.

Letting go of the steering wheel of Life and trusting I will be guided brings me into a state of being. From that place, I allow the creative powers of Life to present possibilities I could not have imagined.

Achieving things can be enjoyable but too much focus is on material things and accolades rather than personal development and spiritual expansion. The ideal is to be both engaged in an active life and detached from it in your stillness. It has become an increasingly common experience to tell people that although I may not be working in the traditional sense, I have been hard at work developing a deeper connection to this universal truth: There is nothing that you need to do. Being is more than enough.

~something said~

"you are an enigma,

wrapped in a riddle,

rolled in a paradox,

dipped in sugar."

[love like no other]

love like no other

if you could only see what i see

you would know that love has always been here

it has travelled the prairies, the country, the earth

it has been a guiding force in times of uncertainty

it has taken shape into something brilliant, beautiful and strong

 

if you could only hear what i hear

you would know that love sounds just like you

a softness in voice

a tenderness of tone

it has called the both of you home

to fill the space with the sounds of life

the sounds of laughter

the sounds of family

 

if you could only feel what i feel

you would know that love has the power to restore

a gentle touch can remove resilient pain

and can calm anxious nerves

it is felt in every limb

in every cell

and every space in between

 

if you could only know what i know

you would understand

that this love is like no other

it has taken hold of two people

of kindred spirits

of unparalled quality

and chooses to express itself

in unending ways

 

This is Love

Following Your Intuition

I have spent my entire life listening and following the guidance and hunches of my intuition. As an introvert, natural observer and intent listener, I became familiar with my intuition at a young age. For years, I believed that following this 6^th sense was a way to avoid unpleasant experiences. You know, your walking down a dark street and get the feeling you are being followed, so you take a pit stop at a corner store to let them pass you by. That kind of intuitional hit is important, on a very basic level and it shaped my idea about its purpose for years. Now being 30 and having lived the consequences of following my ‘gut feelings’, I have come to the conclusion that listening to that inner voice does not give way to avoiding painful and difficult experiences. Sometimes it brings you right into the heart of them. The most powerful of life lessons are often found in and after difficult times.

Is our intuitional system designed to lead us to turbulent events to expedite our growth? No – I am suggesting that intuitional hits are guidance’s for us in that particular moment. They are not all seeing, clairvoyant glimpses into the future. They advise us what we should do in that instant, based on who we are choosing to be. Intuition invites us to choose something that our conscious mind did not consider or catch. It is believed that the mind is processing billions of bits of information every second, but we are only aware of about 2000 of them. Our awareness is shaped by what we believe to be true and what we expect to see. Intuition taps into the billions of unprocessed bits of information and brings it to the forefront our attention based on our soul’s contract.

Everyone is getting this assistance in each moment but are too busy or too distracted to hear it. Here is my suggestion: over the next few days, follow that inner voice, regardless of what your rational mind is thinking. Perhaps it is saying to read a particular book or relax at a coffee shop you walk by. Let that be your guide and enjoy the experience you never ‘thought’ to have had but were directed to nonetheless.