~something said~

"The Truth is inseparable from who you are.

Yes, you are the Truth.

If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time."

- Eckhart Tolle

The Truth Shall Set You Free

The Truth Shall Set You Free

This famous quote from the Bible resonates with most people, regardless of cultural or religious background. The truth, on one hand, is subjective - depending on your level of consciousness, and it appears to be defined by personal experience. On the other hand, the highest truths are the same for all of us and therefore have an objective quality to them. This inherent dichotomy lends itself to each of us discovering our own path to truth and the greatest pointer to your own truth comes from the feelings you have about something. If this old adage is true, how exactly does the truth set us free?

The truth is something that you know and feel to be right for you. Each of us has our own experience of it. It is a belief or understanding that resonates with your very being. It is found within your stillness, guided by your breath. It is of a quality that does not need to be confirmed or approved by anyone else. Nor does the truth have to be reasonable, logical or provable. It simply must be in alignment with you Higher self. In other words: when what you say or do is reflective of your soul and not your ego, you are in alignment with your truth.

The ego creates ideas that it claims to be true and if we are not present enough, we will say and act in ways that are in accordance with this false idea. Statements like “I must struggle first before I succeed” or “I will be worthy if only I get that job” are examples of shadow beliefs that the ego creates in the mind as a truth. But if these shadow beliefs are investigated a bit further- meaning if you bring presence or consciousness to them, they cannot be sustained by the ego. Shadow beliefs are created by the mind through learned behaviors, past experiences and cultural expectations and they are fueled by fear. Fear and conscious awareness cannot coexist. Often times the very thing that we are most afraid or ashamed of are the things that will lead us to a fuller life. They are opportunities (or little pointers) to where you must begin to learn to accept yourself. Only after we accept ourselves completely can we step more fully come into the greatness and the lightness of who you really are and what we are meant to be. The truth that will set you free is not a concept of the mind but rather an inner knowing of the soul. Your soul knows for certain that who you are right now is more than enough. Right now, you are exactly as you should be to step into who you are meant to be. That is the Truth.

The truth sets us free by dispelling the illusion that the mind has created. The falsehoods that we live each day: whether it manifests as buying things that we cannot afford, doing work that does not fulfill us or maintaining relationships that no longer serve us – these lies contribute to the illusion we project. And that illusion keeps us from truly connecting to others. There is a tremendous amount of energy lost by maintaining a falsehood. That’s why you will never fully step into who you are meant to be by pretending to be someone you are not. A lot of people are caught up pretending to be happier, more successful or financially secure than they really are. How can we truly succeed at creating the life we have always wanted while trying to maintain a false pretense? When you present your inauthentic self first, false relationships develop as a result. Your pretend self is engaged with someone else’s pretend self. This type of relationship drains the life force from you because it is the mind that must keep up the pretense. Our infinite creativity and vitality comes from our connection to Life and cannot be supplied by the mind. Life demands that we use each moment and all our energies to create abundance, beauty and love in the world. Our full attention is needed to create the life we have always wanted. Anything less will keep us trapped in our current conditions and freedom will be a concept never truly experienced.

~something said~

"There is no higher god than truth."

-Mahatma Gandhi

Living Your Truth

33-Living your Truth

What does it mean to live your Truth? I’m sure that most of you have heard this expression before. What comes to mind when you hear it? I used to think “living my truth” meant speaking my mind, living as I please and believing in whatever philosophical and spiritual ideas that felt true to me at the time. On a basic, topical level, this is living your truth. To have the freedom to choose whatever you wish and to be in the world as you see fit. But notice the capital “T” on “truth” in the first question I asked. It stands for something that reaches much deeper than the egoic and mundane levels of our lives. Beyond the mind’s idea of “living as I please”, when you are asked if you are living your Truth, the soul stands at attention. If you have the courage to really ask this query, the soul cannot help but begin to evaluate, instigate and reorganize your life in a way that will speak your Truth. Your soul rises to the occasion and the opportunity to express itself more fully. And anything that does not resonate with this higher vibrational frequency shall change or fall away.

I’m speaking of the soul. Your soul. And once engaged, your authentic Self will assist you in every way to live more fully. Activities that once were considered exciting will no longer bring you joy. Whereas, you will be drawn to people, places and experiences that you never considered before. You will find yourself seeking new ways of being in the world that just feel right. Our feelings are a great indicator of knowing if we are in our Truth. You are in alignment with your soul or living your Truth when you are in a feeling of peace and joy in whatever you do. If it doesn’t feel right then what you are doing is not in alignment with who you are.

Often times we will hear something that we know to be intuitively true. Without knowing why we are in agreement with the idea, it somehow creates a shift in our perception and adds another layer to our reality. This occurs when the soul encounters something familiar to it but we are stuck in our mind, our ego, which wants proof before accepting any new idea. When I first heard about the concept - “we are all one”, I felt an inner knowing that this was true. I get goose bumps speaking of it now. I can distinctly remember what happened after hearing that truth, my mind asked the question, “But how is that possible?” My ego wanted proof of something my soul already knew.

Over the next few articles, I will be discussing ideas around living your Truth. I’ll look at why it is of great value (and necessity) to living your fullest life and I’ll look at some practical things we can do to live as authentically as we can while in alignment with our higher selves, our Soul.

The God in me salutes the God in you.

~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