"Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I cant help but ask myself how much I'll let the fear take the wheel and steer
It's driven me before, it seems to have a vagueHaunting mass appeal
Lately I'm beginning to find that I should be the one behind the wheel
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be thereWith open arms and open eyes yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there, I'll be there
So if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive, oh oh
It's driven me before, it seems to be the way
That everyone else gets around
Lately, I'm beginning to find that when I drive myself, my light is found
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be thereWith open arms and open eyes yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there, I'll be there
Would you choose water over wine
Hold the wheel and drive
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be thereWith open arms and open eyes yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there, I'll be there"
---This is song lyrics for the song Drive by Incubus.
"Feel the fear and do it anyway!"
---Susan Jeffers
"Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion."
---Georg Hegel
"From now on everything is sacred."
---Paulo Coelho
We are all creatures to be stirred and impassioned!!! Inspiration is my underlying driving force. And, I want it to influence and inflate every bit of my life. I want my body-mind to be enriched with its electricity both day and night. I want my scope---my visions---to broaden and carry me to the stars and back.
I have known many examples of inspiration throughout my existence. Certainly, I chose art as a medium or it chose me---I am not sure which. But that art has periodically empowered me to explore the impossible and know the profound. I see things creatively. I feel things with great depth. I experience others as I experience myself. Patterned with empathy...understanding from the inside out.
I saw and felt something exceptionally meaningful a few evenings ago. My spirit clamored for more. Each of us is sacred beyond measure. Each of us was designed to give and to take. I took that night and the passion in my mind and heart came alive. The breaths moving through me were long and invoked.
Inspiration is of God. His lungs exhaling into our lungs. His mouth covering ours to further and encourage. We are enheartened by His eternal love.
After 37 years, it has become readily apparent that not everybody feels like I do. Not everybody is inspired at the level of the gods. But, then, perhaps that is a calling for my soul to aspire to fill...bringing the magic to others' worlds...kissing each heart I know with glory and delight. I'd like to imagine that calling to be mine!
Certainly this gift of reaching "Olympus" has come with quite a price. Death has visited my doorstep at least three times to date. Yet, once you know the place where angels fly free and the earth and the sky meet, you cannot easily say no. The beauty, the lyricism, the affectivity are without compare.
I spent many a year perfecting myself to try to reproduce this heaven as an earthly delight. But ironically, it was not perfection or heaven that kept my desires resonating so high. It was my imperfect ways, my humanity, my compassion for the hearts of men that brought me to my knees. Time and again, I would cry.
To inspire you or to inspire him was a truth I could not deny.
I learned to teach. I learned many crafts---painting, printmaking, drawing, it mattered not. All arts spoke to my mind equally.
What causes me to become amused? Sometimes it is a brokenness in another that is so abysmal and without end; sometimes it is special revelation from God Himself; and sometimes I have no understanding of what it is that calls me forth...nevertheless, it calls to me deeply, hungrily and true and I answer it as I can. Mesmerized by its tune, I follow it, follow it, to the end. Wherever that end is, I follow it.
Inspiration is available to all of us. We need only to believe. In our hearts. We need only believe in OUR hearts. Each of us can communicate fluently with that most precious part of us where God lives. If you are into Bible characters, there is a favorite character of mine that demonstrates the fluency quite beautifully. That man is King David whose range of emotions was staggering and powerful. He lived from the breast. He never feared to live from where he stood. He was real.
There are many others in life that share this type of fluency. Religion is not the only venue for such candor. Check out someone like the actor, Robin Williams. The man is extremely gifted. He hasn't had many bad movie parts out there!
Learning to live daily from the heart can be scary at times; but the reward of such a life is dynamic and giant.
Where does your heart call you? How can you take a baby step today to get where your heart wants you to go? If you have a big vision, start at the roots and move your way toward the limbs.
My illness has enabled me to swing from the trees like Tarzan. But, it has done a great amount of damage to my body and my life. I recommend that you find your roots. For some of you, that might be your job, your family, your friends...whatever! Just start looking until you locate them.
I love art. Some of you love singing. Some of you love athletics. It doesn't matter what you love---just that you jump into that love with all four limbs.
Be inspired. Let God exhale into your lungs every day. Fail to fear. Overcome every obstacle set before you. You have the power to do that one way or another. You are sacred. Learn to live your life with devotion. Learn to believe in the aspect of yourself that is holy. That is your heart. Trust in that which leads you---awareness or not.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
"The universe is in change, life is an opinion." Marcus Aurelius
"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment."
---Eckhart Tolle
"What was considered a peak mystical experience a few years ago is today the basic platform of sanity from which our exploration begins."
---Arjuna Ardagh
"To me, I just view everything as an experience. We label it 'failure' or 'success,' when in fact it's just an experience. And we can learn from every experience—good, bad, or indifferent."
---Stephen Shapiro
" The word 'discernment' will be used here to signify the power to discriminate between a perceived reality and the possibility that the perception may be illusory. Discernment is not the same as faith, for faith may be a personal creation, either mental or emotional, but discernment is a quite certain recognition of the reality or truth of something, and is acquired by the higher consciousness.
Every certainty is the result of an experience. If the experience has come through the senses, the emotions, or the intellect, then the certainty is no more than relative; it is beyond doubt only when it is the fruit of a genuine spiritual experience of identification.
Identification is the union of a art of one’s being with the object contemplated, whether or not this object is in the field of sensory perception.
True identification is communion between the perceiver and the perceived, and this communion does not permit the intrusion of any notions foreign to the reality of the object contemplated. It demands accordingly the exclusion of all notions or impressions arising from the personality of the perceiver, for this might corrupt the integrity of his perception; that is, it requires absolute neutrality, whether this is obtained accidentally for a moment or by perfect control.
Perfect control of our mental faculties, by holding them steady and reducing them to the role of an absolutely neutral observer, makes identification possible, and conscious identification obtained in these conditions amounts to certain knowledge.
Identification can also happen accidentally through momentary emptiness of mind; but in that case it is without the conscious control which coordinates spiritual perceptions, and is thus an unconscious identification. Most intuitive perceptions are of this order and cannot have the value of certainties for lack of the necessary 'discernment'; they remain probabilities which must be evaluated more and more closely by a process of verification strictly purified from personal prejudice.
The possibility of distinguishing without error between the certainty and the mere probability of an experience of identification may be called 'the discernment of discernment.'
The value of a flash of discernment cannot be measured in time; it is a moment of wisdom, of true knowledge. A sage may enjoy such moments more or less frequently, but they are never continuous so long as he is obliged to undergo the accidents and relativism of life on earth.
The discernment of a true discernment requires the man who would practice it an experimental knowledge of his own different states of consciousness and of the value of the evidence they offer him. Only in such a case can our discernment have the value of reality, and thus allow us to find our answers in ourselves."
---Isha Lubicz
"These are the Five Steps to Peace, and if you take them, you can shift everything on your planet.
1. You can choose to acknowledge that some of your old beliefs about God and about Life are no longer working.
2. You can choose to acknowledge that there is something you do not understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which will change everything.
3. You can choose to be willing for a new understanding of God and Life to now be brought forth, and an understanding that could produce a new way of life on your planet.
4. You can choose to be courageous enough to explore and examine the new understanding, as it aligns with your inner truth and knowing, to enlarge your belief system to include it.
5. You can choose to live your lives as demonstrations of your highest and grandest beliefs, rather than as denials of them."
---Neale Donald Walsch
Yesterday I had brunch with three friends of mine. We are all broad minded and deep thinking women. Our general topic of conversation was expanding consciousness, and how that was going to affect the planet with live on. Apparently Oprah Winfrey has been taking the heat recently due to her support for Eckhart Tolle. I don't really like Oprah, but I am intrigued with her stand regarding consciousness. I have not read Tolle's new book yet, but I did receive a packet of CDs of the book that another friend burned for me.
As I am sure you know, I am a big proponent for love. I think love is the most powerful thing in the universe. From my perspective, love is God.
It is my opinion that love is steadily raising the vibration levels in the universe so that we can all feel as though we are a part of it. Of course, we already ARE a part of it; some of us just have a hard time experiencing it because our awareness factor is so low. Our vibrational patterns are hovering at a much lower position than love itself.
Here is what I feel is funny. People like to categorize. Categorization seemingly makes things easier to deal with inside the human mind. But by the same token, it negates a lot of free thinking. It closes doors. It draws lines around ideas and creates barriers. The women and I were discussing how the evolution of the mind (and thus the universe) is going to be a great struggle for religious fundamentalists and such.
Yes, it certainly seems like a tough place could come from the conflict between higher consciousness and fundamentalism; but, after the discussion yesterday, I happened to think of the prayer factor. One thing I remember from my days of Christianity, is that the people in church congregations knew/know the power of prayer really well. The thing is, currently, many churches are praying small rather than large. What I mean by that is that instead of opening prayers to include the universe and all its things and inhabitants, Christians tend to hyperfocus. They sort their prayers through filters that close situations, people, and even God down. In other words, they narrow their "searches" rather than "exploding" them. I have found an exception to this rule is when there is great trauma and/or pain involved, and Christians open wide and practically beg for resolution. They put no limits on their "search terms." They just lay themselves prostrate and cry out to the Lord.
Ok, so here is how I see life in the West at the moment: Within the Christian Church there is a big movement that has been tracking and growing ever larger year by year since virtually the beginning. The movement is the Revelation. Christians have been prophesying for millenia about the Rapture and the doom and gloom of the planet---except for fellow believers---as a result of the Book of Revelation. This movement is not positive and if you adhere to the understanding of the Law of Attraction, it is truly homicidal (and quite possibly, suicidal) insanity.
Amidst this movement, is an underlying lesson of love and forgiveness. Of course, according to most followers of the "True faith," there are stipulations attached to those as well. One such stipulation, is that you have to be graced with the love, and the grace comes through some sort of pre-arranged benevolence of God that is only granted to a select few.
The "select few" idea used to drive me during my days of evangelism. I certainly wanted all the people of the planet to know God's redeeming grace, so in my mind, missionary work was the Way for me. But the theory was turned inside out, and eventually, it just tore my heart out as I returned to the United States (very sick and very financially bankrupt) after a time working overseas in Hong Kong.
It took me many years to reconcile with my current position regarding love and faith. And, I contend even now, that we are all on a continuum. The course of life is not stagnate and it is completely eternal---always. Life is CHANGE...constantly. Time and space are invented phenomenon, and as our collective conscious and unconscious grow, their role is going to shift quickly and, perhaps, permanently.
My stance for this moment is that Love is freely available to us all. Love surrounds us. Love is in us. Love penetrated heaven and earth long ago. Love created us. Love is completely abundant...there is no shortage. Love owns our hearts. Love can own our minds at any second.
I came to know Divine Love through my personal relationship with Christ. But, unlike some would profess, that "party" of mine was/is not exclusive. Anyone, at any time, can join in the "festival" of loving. Special revelation relates love through every entity there is. Loving is simply a choice; and it is a choice that must be continually made throughout our infite journey.
From my perspective, people close themselves off from loving all the time. The most common reason for that closure is a pain---a wound. But, it can, also, be from habit. So, if people are not careful, one "wound" can create a succession of grief that severs off whole lines of thinking.
I see groupthinks doing this sort of closure all the time; and, when I say groupthinks, I include groups like the New Age Movement, Pagans, Christians, Muslims, Jews, women, men, young people, etc. Laws and by-laws can be contrived from such habitual thinking. Groupthinks are merely concentrated pockets of energy. Thoughts get focused and lifted up again and again until an energy ball explodes from within.
Which brings me to my earlier thought about categorization. Something I have noticed since I was a small child is that religion and science are pitted against one another; and there is extreme irony where that is concerned because going back in history, there was hardly any distinction between the two. The sovereign made all governing distinctions.
Well, when I look at my life now, I am heavily immersed in the chakra system, energy work, holistic modalities as well as traditional medicine, and a heart for God. I am returning to the ideas and celebrations of the pre-medieval period of the West, and I am claiming my own individualized belief system. Perhaps some day I will find or found my own groupthink, again; but, then again, perhaps I will not. I just don't know. But, what I do know is that as I learn about consciousness, and as "I sip from the bottles of science" I come to find parallel universes between God, Man, and all that we know. We are in the year 2008. We are no longer ignorant peoples depending on verse, stained glass, priest, Church or Sovereign. Most of us are highly literate individuals that long to live freely so that we can know and pursue happiness. If we are not literate, we can be.
It is time for us to awaken to all the beauties that live between our beings. We are contrived of energy. It is time for us ALL to feel the constant and infinite vibration of Love. [Can't you imagine that God's vibration would be beyond all thought---beyond all being???]
We each have this Love inside us at this moment. Stop. Take a deep breath. Visualize the most beautiful thing that you have ever experienced. Breathe again. Feel the feeling of that beauty. This is what love feels like. This is what love is. You didn't have to go anywhere to get that feeling---that knowing,. Now open your mind to any amazing possibility. Love is far beyond this possibility and Love lives in your heart. Believe it. Receive it. "Achieve" it! Say, "Yes," to it.
God's grace is infinite. It is not a game of hop-scotch. No select few are any more important than anyone else. God is totally abundant. God IS Love. Quit shutting people out, and start letting people in. The world wants and needs your love. Pain is still a reality. The body is important because the body is the most precious material on the planet. We each get one per incarnation. Death has many lessons to teach us. Eternal life instructs us with many more!
Discover the God who lives within. Choose love!
---Eckhart Tolle
"What was considered a peak mystical experience a few years ago is today the basic platform of sanity from which our exploration begins."
---Arjuna Ardagh
"To me, I just view everything as an experience. We label it 'failure' or 'success,' when in fact it's just an experience. And we can learn from every experience—good, bad, or indifferent."
---Stephen Shapiro
" The word 'discernment' will be used here to signify the power to discriminate between a perceived reality and the possibility that the perception may be illusory. Discernment is not the same as faith, for faith may be a personal creation, either mental or emotional, but discernment is a quite certain recognition of the reality or truth of something, and is acquired by the higher consciousness.
Every certainty is the result of an experience. If the experience has come through the senses, the emotions, or the intellect, then the certainty is no more than relative; it is beyond doubt only when it is the fruit of a genuine spiritual experience of identification.
Identification is the union of a art of one’s being with the object contemplated, whether or not this object is in the field of sensory perception.
True identification is communion between the perceiver and the perceived, and this communion does not permit the intrusion of any notions foreign to the reality of the object contemplated. It demands accordingly the exclusion of all notions or impressions arising from the personality of the perceiver, for this might corrupt the integrity of his perception; that is, it requires absolute neutrality, whether this is obtained accidentally for a moment or by perfect control.
Perfect control of our mental faculties, by holding them steady and reducing them to the role of an absolutely neutral observer, makes identification possible, and conscious identification obtained in these conditions amounts to certain knowledge.
Identification can also happen accidentally through momentary emptiness of mind; but in that case it is without the conscious control which coordinates spiritual perceptions, and is thus an unconscious identification. Most intuitive perceptions are of this order and cannot have the value of certainties for lack of the necessary 'discernment'; they remain probabilities which must be evaluated more and more closely by a process of verification strictly purified from personal prejudice.
The possibility of distinguishing without error between the certainty and the mere probability of an experience of identification may be called 'the discernment of discernment.'
The value of a flash of discernment cannot be measured in time; it is a moment of wisdom, of true knowledge. A sage may enjoy such moments more or less frequently, but they are never continuous so long as he is obliged to undergo the accidents and relativism of life on earth.
The discernment of a true discernment requires the man who would practice it an experimental knowledge of his own different states of consciousness and of the value of the evidence they offer him. Only in such a case can our discernment have the value of reality, and thus allow us to find our answers in ourselves."
---Isha Lubicz
"These are the Five Steps to Peace, and if you take them, you can shift everything on your planet.
1. You can choose to acknowledge that some of your old beliefs about God and about Life are no longer working.
2. You can choose to acknowledge that there is something you do not understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which will change everything.
3. You can choose to be willing for a new understanding of God and Life to now be brought forth, and an understanding that could produce a new way of life on your planet.
4. You can choose to be courageous enough to explore and examine the new understanding, as it aligns with your inner truth and knowing, to enlarge your belief system to include it.
5. You can choose to live your lives as demonstrations of your highest and grandest beliefs, rather than as denials of them."
---Neale Donald Walsch
Yesterday I had brunch with three friends of mine. We are all broad minded and deep thinking women. Our general topic of conversation was expanding consciousness, and how that was going to affect the planet with live on. Apparently Oprah Winfrey has been taking the heat recently due to her support for Eckhart Tolle. I don't really like Oprah, but I am intrigued with her stand regarding consciousness. I have not read Tolle's new book yet, but I did receive a packet of CDs of the book that another friend burned for me.
As I am sure you know, I am a big proponent for love. I think love is the most powerful thing in the universe. From my perspective, love is God.
It is my opinion that love is steadily raising the vibration levels in the universe so that we can all feel as though we are a part of it. Of course, we already ARE a part of it; some of us just have a hard time experiencing it because our awareness factor is so low. Our vibrational patterns are hovering at a much lower position than love itself.
Here is what I feel is funny. People like to categorize. Categorization seemingly makes things easier to deal with inside the human mind. But by the same token, it negates a lot of free thinking. It closes doors. It draws lines around ideas and creates barriers. The women and I were discussing how the evolution of the mind (and thus the universe) is going to be a great struggle for religious fundamentalists and such.
Yes, it certainly seems like a tough place could come from the conflict between higher consciousness and fundamentalism; but, after the discussion yesterday, I happened to think of the prayer factor. One thing I remember from my days of Christianity, is that the people in church congregations knew/know the power of prayer really well. The thing is, currently, many churches are praying small rather than large. What I mean by that is that instead of opening prayers to include the universe and all its things and inhabitants, Christians tend to hyperfocus. They sort their prayers through filters that close situations, people, and even God down. In other words, they narrow their "searches" rather than "exploding" them. I have found an exception to this rule is when there is great trauma and/or pain involved, and Christians open wide and practically beg for resolution. They put no limits on their "search terms." They just lay themselves prostrate and cry out to the Lord.
Ok, so here is how I see life in the West at the moment: Within the Christian Church there is a big movement that has been tracking and growing ever larger year by year since virtually the beginning. The movement is the Revelation. Christians have been prophesying for millenia about the Rapture and the doom and gloom of the planet---except for fellow believers---as a result of the Book of Revelation. This movement is not positive and if you adhere to the understanding of the Law of Attraction, it is truly homicidal (and quite possibly, suicidal) insanity.
Amidst this movement, is an underlying lesson of love and forgiveness. Of course, according to most followers of the "True faith," there are stipulations attached to those as well. One such stipulation, is that you have to be graced with the love, and the grace comes through some sort of pre-arranged benevolence of God that is only granted to a select few.
The "select few" idea used to drive me during my days of evangelism. I certainly wanted all the people of the planet to know God's redeeming grace, so in my mind, missionary work was the Way for me. But the theory was turned inside out, and eventually, it just tore my heart out as I returned to the United States (very sick and very financially bankrupt) after a time working overseas in Hong Kong.
It took me many years to reconcile with my current position regarding love and faith. And, I contend even now, that we are all on a continuum. The course of life is not stagnate and it is completely eternal---always. Life is CHANGE...constantly. Time and space are invented phenomenon, and as our collective conscious and unconscious grow, their role is going to shift quickly and, perhaps, permanently.
My stance for this moment is that Love is freely available to us all. Love surrounds us. Love is in us. Love penetrated heaven and earth long ago. Love created us. Love is completely abundant...there is no shortage. Love owns our hearts. Love can own our minds at any second.
I came to know Divine Love through my personal relationship with Christ. But, unlike some would profess, that "party" of mine was/is not exclusive. Anyone, at any time, can join in the "festival" of loving. Special revelation relates love through every entity there is. Loving is simply a choice; and it is a choice that must be continually made throughout our infite journey.
From my perspective, people close themselves off from loving all the time. The most common reason for that closure is a pain---a wound. But, it can, also, be from habit. So, if people are not careful, one "wound" can create a succession of grief that severs off whole lines of thinking.
I see groupthinks doing this sort of closure all the time; and, when I say groupthinks, I include groups like the New Age Movement, Pagans, Christians, Muslims, Jews, women, men, young people, etc. Laws and by-laws can be contrived from such habitual thinking. Groupthinks are merely concentrated pockets of energy. Thoughts get focused and lifted up again and again until an energy ball explodes from within.
Which brings me to my earlier thought about categorization. Something I have noticed since I was a small child is that religion and science are pitted against one another; and there is extreme irony where that is concerned because going back in history, there was hardly any distinction between the two. The sovereign made all governing distinctions.
Well, when I look at my life now, I am heavily immersed in the chakra system, energy work, holistic modalities as well as traditional medicine, and a heart for God. I am returning to the ideas and celebrations of the pre-medieval period of the West, and I am claiming my own individualized belief system. Perhaps some day I will find or found my own groupthink, again; but, then again, perhaps I will not. I just don't know. But, what I do know is that as I learn about consciousness, and as "I sip from the bottles of science" I come to find parallel universes between God, Man, and all that we know. We are in the year 2008. We are no longer ignorant peoples depending on verse, stained glass, priest, Church or Sovereign. Most of us are highly literate individuals that long to live freely so that we can know and pursue happiness. If we are not literate, we can be.
It is time for us to awaken to all the beauties that live between our beings. We are contrived of energy. It is time for us ALL to feel the constant and infinite vibration of Love. [Can't you imagine that God's vibration would be beyond all thought---beyond all being???]
We each have this Love inside us at this moment. Stop. Take a deep breath. Visualize the most beautiful thing that you have ever experienced. Breathe again. Feel the feeling of that beauty. This is what love feels like. This is what love is. You didn't have to go anywhere to get that feeling---that knowing,. Now open your mind to any amazing possibility. Love is far beyond this possibility and Love lives in your heart. Believe it. Receive it. "Achieve" it! Say, "Yes," to it.
God's grace is infinite. It is not a game of hop-scotch. No select few are any more important than anyone else. God is totally abundant. God IS Love. Quit shutting people out, and start letting people in. The world wants and needs your love. Pain is still a reality. The body is important because the body is the most precious material on the planet. We each get one per incarnation. Death has many lessons to teach us. Eternal life instructs us with many more!
Discover the God who lives within. Choose love!
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