All of our life experiences have been trying to teach us a certain grand lesson: Liberation from our captive condition (whatever that may be in the moment) cannot come by further deliberating it. We can see the wisdom in doing nothing toward our own troubled thoughts and feelings when we realize that the only way not to be dragged under by these negative states is to stay out of their life.
In many ways, this kind of watchfulness is a meditation. It involves our willingness – wherever we are and in whatever we’re doing, and regardless of what that moment may be that brings up in us what it does – that to do nothing in the face of those reactions is the beginning of a new relationship with them, the beginning of the next level of meditation. Because you see, meditation isn’t just sitting someplace with our eyes closed, quietly contemplating something of a spiritual nature, or doing whatever discipline we do in order to make the mind be still. No. That’s not meditation, at least not the next level that we’re looking at together.
It’s a little-known secret that our experience of life in any given moment is a direct reflection of what we actually value in that same moment. We may deny this unsettling truth, but when it comes to what we are in relationship with, inwardly and outwardly, actions speak louder than words—and, seen or not, all actions are a choice of one kind or another.
Nothing in the universe can make us choose to act against ourselves, as in when we consort with self-compromising negative states. Living in sorrow, with anger, or awash in regrets is a consensual affair. These dark states never dance alone; they must have a partner to produce their pain, which brings us to this good news: we are released from the dark embrace of any unhappy thought or feeling in the same moment we see that we’ve been tricked into dancing that troubled tango.
Use the following five insights to help you choose higher self-awareness as your new partner in life, and watch how effortless it becomes to start giving yourself what you really want.
Our most fruitful field for self-discovery and life-enhancement is also the one we least understand or know how to use. And yet, virtually every moment offers abundant chances to benefit from it. What is this highly valuable field of opportunity? Our relationships.
Consider these truths: It is within relationships that we grow as individuals in everything valuable, because it is through them that we become stronger and wiser, allowing us to realize a love that transcends our unseen self-limiting self-interests. Yet, even though we may acknowledge the existence of this path to self-perfection, the essential mystery of exactly how to use this endless resource remains obscured.
How do we use our relationships to change the balance sheet of our lives so that for every measure of impatience and intolerance there may be at least an equivalent sum of compassion and consideration? And how do we learn to use our relationships with others to realize a new kind of relationship with ourselves so that we can discover the beautiful fact that who we really are is all we need to be?
Our willingness to work our way through the following twelve special practices -- to strive to use these higher ideals in our relationships with others -- will reward us with the Real Life our hearts longs for.
The main purpose of these special practices is to show us how to use each developing moment in our relationships with family, friends, and coworkers to consciously change our relationship with them, and more importantly, with ourselves.
If we are honest we will admit that, with few exceptions, the usual focus of our attention and interactions with others is centered on our selves and the fulfillment of our desires. "How do I feel about you?" "What do I want from him?" or "When will she realize that I know best?" In other words, the mindset of this largely unconscious self, under most circumstances, is: "Me first."
By forever placing its own considerations before considering any other, this self-serving nature remains the master of its own universe, even if all that revolves through it is its own imagined importance.
Be Present with Feelings and Guidance
Unless there is actually something dangerous happening in this present moment, being fully in the moment brings a release of stress.
The wounded self is addicted to focusing on the past or future – ruminating about the past, perhaps with regret – and worrying about the future – trying to control it. If you notice your body while you are ruminating or worrying, you will notice that your body is tense. The tension is your inner guidance letting you know that your wounded self is in charge and you are abandoning yourself.
When you notice this, shift into being in this present moment and notice the peace and relaxation that floods your body.
I believe that we are at this point in our lives, having to have gone through everything we have gone through, everything we have experienced, so that we can meet what is unfolding at this moment peacefully. This is why you have done everything in your life as you have done. As we are, and as we are unfolding and moving forward, expanding into who the person we have come here to be, it is important to remember we have gone through the necessary preparation required, in order to access the love, the light, the presence that lives within us.
So often, we feel like something is missing. We invalidate our journey, and we feel like we are not ready or equipped to meet life. What I want you to know is that you were born ready and equipped to meet life. This is your time. Everything that you have gone through, and everything that you have experienced has been in preparation for this very moment. Life isn’t always going to go the way you expect it to go, or the way you think it will go. As Spiritual Beings, acceptance is the fastest path back to peace.
You are a blessing on this Earth. You are a miracle. You as you are right now, regardless of how you have lived your life, are loved completely and totally by God. You, in the moment, are complete.
The reason why you have struggled to access that state of being on a consistent basis is because you, in some way shape or form, have been led to believe that you, as you are, isn’t enough.
I want you to remember the truth we see and experience is love at the deepest level. This whole play, the whole thing, the people you speak to, the people that you don’t speak to, the people that are in the background, the people that are in the foreground, every life experience, every circumstance in every situation is love. That means that in this moment, YOU ARE LOVED! It’s time to engage in every activity with a smile on your face and with love in your heart. The individual who can do that is free of the illusion.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead, 1901-1978, Anthropologist, Writer and Speaker
Do you have any idea how much your caring and kindness change the world each and every moment? Do you understand that your joy, as well as your misery, goes into the energy field that we live in and has an effect on the entire planet?
Energy is not local. Many of us have had the experience of picking up the energy of someone we are very close to, even if they were thousands of miles away. You might have had a sense of the moment when someone you loved died. You might have picked up the phone and called a loved one just as they were thinking about you. We live in a universe of energy, and our thoughts, feelings and actions are a part of this energy.
When are you?
The Practice:
Enjoy now.
Why?
There’s a profound and miraculous mystery right under our noses: this instant of now has no duration at all, yet somehow it contains all the causes from the past that are creating the future. Everything arising to become this moment vanishes beneath our feet as the next moment wells up. Since it’s always now, now is eternal.
The nature of now is not New Age or esoteric. It is plain to see. It is apparent both in the material universe and in our own experiencing. Simply recognizing the nature of now can fill you with wonder, gratitude, and perhaps a sense of something sacred.
Breakups are never easy.
Often difficult, painful, and sometimes messy.
Know this: Your heart can never be truly broken, even though it might seem that way in the moment. Your heart is beyond physical, it’s capacity to love is infinite.
In any breakup your heart gets broken open beyond its current capacity to love. Prior to the breakup you were able to love to a certain degree. The breakup shatters the edges of your heart’s limits. Yes, it can be painful in the moment, but like a deep yoga pose it stretches you beyond who and what you were. Breathe into it, and allow your heart to open wider.
Every breakup is a potential breakthrough. Every breakup is a graduation to your next level, so long as you learn the lessons of the relationship.
The end of a relationship with someone you love can be extremely painful, but it is not a failure. The real success of a relationship is not in how long you stay together, but in how much you became the most authentic version of yourself and how much you loved.
Imagine for a moment you’ve gone to a movie cineplex that has 16 separate theaters in it. You buy your ticket and walk into the show you came to see. But, before too long, you realize you don’t like what’s on the screen so you decide to change theaters. Unfortunately, the next movie’s just as pointless. So you change theaters again. And again. Now as long as you remain one of those audience members who live only from the level of the lower “me mind” your only choice is to ramble around within the cineplex. You move from one show to the next—all the while not remembering that the film you just walked into was unable to please you the first time you saw it.
But by learning to live from the higher Free Mind another choice comes to you. You walk out of the movies. You take yourself out of the theater complex. Now you’re free to go enjoy the rest of your day in some other way.
To help you better grasp the intention of this illustration, we need to take a brief look into the theater of our usual mind. Consider your own thinking for just a moment. Can you see how your mind loves to go over and over events that haven’t even happened yet? This mental process is the “me mind” hard at work. But let’s take a closer look at what this nature of ours is really doing.
Each time the “me mind” envisions some future event it’s actually trying to find a feeling of security for itself. But the only security this lower nature can ever know is imaginary. So it has to dream up one scene after another where somehow you’ll come out a winner. The more victories it conjures up in this way, the more fear it feels that it won’t win the battles it just created. And the more agitated this low level of mind becomes from its own unconscious activity, the more it tries to settle itself with more mental movies. We can see the end of this painful picture without having to draw it ourselves. This psychological profile demonstrates what it means to be both prisoner and prison maker!
The Free Mind is always a witness to your whole mental and emotional experience, so it can’t be made a slave of any hidden desire. In this instance, the higher intelligence of the Free Mind instantly understands that no mere mental picture of security has any real power to make you feel secure.
And this realization empowers you, effortlessly, to just walk out of your own mental movie. Can you see the immense difference between the “me mind” and the Free Mind scenarios? Being able to consciously walk out of the movie- making complex of the “me mind” is the same as the power to free yourself. Why? Because once you walk out of this tiny darkened theater that your lower nature considers the whole world, you know for certain and at last: there is something outside the world of your usual mind. And once you walk into its light, you know that everything can be forever new for you.
I stepped out on my deck and was pulled into the moment of all that was taking place around me. It was the sounds that I connected to first. The squirrels talking loudly in their world. Our wind chime reacting to the breeze. Sea gulls chasing a much larger eagle through the sky. An ambulance too far away to hear, but I could see the flashing lights. It became obvious to me that we are surrounded by choices; choices of where to place our attention.
We can find ourselves fully experiencing the moment by accident, or by purposefully calling our attention to the moment. Sometimes we need courage. Other times we need healing to help us embrace awareness. I discovered my ability to fall into the moment by accident. Growing up I enjoyed sitting outside in the presence of animals. Nature and animals were one of the sweetest parts of my childhood. Both of these have helped me connect. They have both helped me heal. I have also learned that if we have suffering anywhere in the world, we all suffer.
You and I are a part of a process that’s going on in our culture at this moment.
And to that extent we are conscious of that process, it’s easier for us to let our acts support that process while simultaneously holding the confusion we feel because the process is leading us in uncharted ways into feelings we have not had before. It seems to me we are all traditionalists, we are all modernists, and we are all ‘cultural creatives.’ To the extent that you bring it all into consciousness, you can feel the way it affects all of it. I often feel like Kahlil Gibran, the prophet: “Speak to us of love, speak to us of pain, speak to us of child rearing…” all of the aspects of life that he taught about.
To the extent that you bring each aspect of your life under scrutiny, there is an opportunity to have that aspect of your life be something which supports transformation.
I mean a lot of people are incredibly generous in the world, but with their family, they are very, very tight, and yet they’re bringing offspring into the world. Many people have greed in one corner of their consciousness and philanthropy in another corner of their consciousness. I’m not knocking them, but just to be conscious about it, to cope with it, to be with it, that’s the first thing.
I’m not arguing for everybody to give up everything, It’s not gonna solve the problem.
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