Gregg Braden on Consciousness

Heart Chakra

diagram from www.americanspiritualhealing.com

I've been thinking about my heart chakra this week.  Probably because I've been in a state of bliss.  My heart has been enjoying that hum of satisfaction that contentment brings.  Almost feels like it's beating just a little outside of my chest and has this magical ability to bring the world around me into harmony.

This is such a lovely place to be.  When I'm here, there is a security that everything will take care of itself!  There is no worry or anxiety ~ just presence.  When I'm in, it feels like nothing can upset the equilibrium.  When I'm out, I can feel myself resisting, wondering how it is you get back in.  As though I must go through an invisible veil.  Truth is you get here through a quantum leap, you don't actually travel through space but suddenly find yourself in a new spiritual location.

The heart chakra is the mid-point.  Our spiritual fulcrum.  The chakras below represent survival. The chakras above embody our spiritual quests.  It is the heart chakra that creates balance between our physical self (need for survival) and our gateway to living higher universal truths.

The forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was reported to have the inscription Know Thyself carved into the stone.   All understanding must begin with the heart.  If the heart is not in harmony with all other aspects of life, there can be no fluidity, no forgiveness, no daring adventures to set sail upon.  It is the brain that acquiesces to the heart, not the other way around.  When the heart is congruently aligned with love, the brain will interpret the world from a vantage of courage and be undaunted by the ebbs and flow of life.  It is in this space that one can begin to know thyself.

The Power is in the Mind

Your Avatar and Spiritual Self

So my question today is... Who is controlling you?

We all go about our lives doing more or less the same kind of activities ~ we all have bodily functions that require attending (eat, sleep), we all need to work (create a means to provide for ourselves), we are all looking for love and friendship.  And within each of these bounds range the extremes ~ those who have everything and those who have nothing.

Lack in any of these areas is a form of dis-ease.  When our bodies don't perform properly we have compromised health.  When our work is disrupted or cut off, our families fall into poverty and disharmony.  Without love and friendship, life loses its meaning and we become depressed.  It is easy to feel like we must protect and cling on to any provisions we've been able to secure.  Our mentality starts to whisper over and over that once we attain it, then we fear we will lose it.

Far too many people are living from this place of fear.  Why?  Because they see themselves as the only one in control.  They take on personal responsibility for securing all areas of their well-being.  They keep too many balls in the air, and suffocate themselves under the weight of their own self-imposed responsibility.

So how do you free yourself and live fear-less-ly?

First of all, recognize that everything in your life flows from your spiritual self.  Even if you don't define yourself as a spiritual person, your ability to give and receive and interact with others in the world comes from a spiritual/universal place.  How these qualities manifest in your physical life determines how your life unfolds.

Think of your physical self as your avatar.  Now realize that it is yours spiritual self that drives this avatar.  Your physical self is merely performing the duties of your own mind, which if you dig a little deeper you'll soon realize is a local connection to the cosmos that births us all.  We have this false sense of independence.

Once we acknowledge that we are a local incarnation of the universal mind, we can accept the presence and peace of being cared for.  This should give us courage.  This should strengthen our spiritual self.  This should open us up to knowing that everything we need is already before us.  We may have to fine tune our receptive frequency to attain it, but it is there.

So, to the question... Who is controlling you?  Only you can answer that.  But remember, your physical self is motivated from your spiritual self.  Once you start getting a handle on that, all things become possible.

Why I Remember

Years ago I attended a Remembrance Day ceremony with my grandfather.  He, like the other Veterans, was dressed most distinguishable.  I had never seen him in uniform before.


I remember being startled by how quickly he seemed to be transformed.  The man who had so often picked me up from school and took pleasure in teaching me to play cards every time my mother got out of ear shot, had somehow slid into the shadows.  Overtaken by a life that taken place decades ago.


I couldn't take my eyes off of him throughout the ceremony.  He stood tall and regal.  Calm and still, but only on the outside.  I swear I could taste the sadness on that November day, which couldn't decide if it wanted to rain or just saturate the air with heaviness.


An inkling of just how terrible those war years must have been, caught me up like a blanket you get tangled in and struggle to get out of.  My heart knew that unspeakable things must have been witnessed.  I could never quite take the man out of the uniform from that day on.


So on November 11, I remember.

New

Come on over to SHE SAID.  Read War God.

See Beyond

Sometimes life is about hurting other people.  Not that we do this with malice.  In fact, we often defer our own happiness because we want so badly to keep the waters calm.  When below the exterior, we are wrought with undercurrents and distress from putting others in front of ourselves.

Lately I've been meeting myself in mirrors and dreams.   And we keep circling around how the future is going to look and feel.  How it has already changed and begun.  How the course is set.  I'm not fearful of it.  In fact, I welcome it.  I smile and breath it in, knowing that it's all going to be fine.  Better.  Even if it takes me a bit of time to find my sea legs once I leave the shore.

There will be collateral damage.  People that will endure a certain amount of bruising and battering.   Whose beliefs will be tested, challenged.  And part of me finds that a daunting burden, the responsibility of it.  Part of me doesn't want to upset the apple cart.  Would rather pretend that these philosophies can be lived with, endured, perpetuated.

But the me that is being called forward, the me that is not afraid and seeks the truth... Knows that our thorns also bear us the most beautiful of flowers.  And that life without provocation stagnates and diminishes.

“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.”  Ben Okri

Astrological Puzzle Pieces

On the day I was born the sun was in Taurus so in my life I need to keep things simple and calm.  The sun was bathing Saturn in the Eleventh House so I ask questions like "What do you want out of life?  What are your priorities?  How do you create a future according to your deepest interests and values?"

My moon was in the Third House.  In evolutionary terms I'm always asking myself "Can I keep a radically open mind?  Can I discern what is before my eyes?"  According to Steven Forrest this makes for an imaginative, uniquely personal set of views and opinions.

The Crab or Cancer is my Ascending birth sign.  The Ascendant represents your style or the mask you wear in life.  The evolutionary aims of the Crab are to open the inner eye, map the topography of consciousness and express compassion.   My Ascendant sign increases the role of the healer as a natural outflow of my life.

15 Authors in 15 Minutes

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. 

1. Rilke
2. Wayne Dyer
3. Deepak Chopra
4. Margaret Laurence
5. Maya Angelou
6. Tom Harpur
7. Dan Brown
8. Paulo Coelho
9. Ken Gire
10. Mary Oliver
11. Eckhart Tolle
12. Christopher Dewdney
13. Osho
14. Wei Hui
15. Malcolm Gladwell

So, who's on your list?

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house. 
Every morning a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness, 
some momentary awareness comes 
as an unexpected visitor. 

Welcome and entertain them all! 
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, 
who violently sweep your house 
empty of its furniture, 
still, treat each guest honorably. 
He may be clearing you out 
for some new delight. 

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, 
meet them at the door laughing, 
and invite them in. 

Be grateful for whoever comes, 
because each has been sent 
as a guide from beyond.


~ Rumi ~

Power

Perspective is everything.  Change your thoughts, change your life (Dyer).   And sometimes I just need to have a mini-crisis to get myself back to where I am suppose to be.   I definitely know when I wander off the path!

And for me the way out requires a re-commitment to quality quiet time, to get re-grounded and re-focused.  To remember what it is that I want out of life and bring my daily actions back in line with my beliefs.

I believe in things unseen.  I believe that my life is unfolding in the direction that it is meant.  I believe that today is a good day and that the lessons I am here to learn in Earth School will present themselves to me as they are needed.  I believe that overcoming this current dip in the road is an achievement my mind and heart needs to make.  And I will persevere.

Could it be the weather?

My heart has been heavy these past days.  I'd like to blame it on one or two things, but these things usually come from a basket full of small things collected from corners and under beds.  Before long they are spilling out into the hall and jamming up the closet doors.  Someone has to pick them up!

Maybe I'm sad.  A lot of things in my life are changing.  A few things I WANT to change are clogging up the drains and making me frustrated.  

I suppose it all just needs time.  And I need to settle into a new rhythm of accepting the things I cannot change.  For the time being, anyway.

Today is October 27.  In eight months I suspect the waiting and the games will all be over.  In terms of a lifetime, a short time to wait indeed.

Favourites

It is a grey day here in the north.  The air still.  There are just a handful of leaves that remain on one of the poplars in the backyard.  They're hanging straight down, like they are frozen in place and you'd have to pry them with some hard metal object to make them move.  Everything is whitish, looks and feels like snow is about to cover us up in a blanket.

I have a couple of appointments today, so I'm home from school.  And tomorrow night I am hosting a 40th birthday party for Jeremy. I know once I get going on my to-do list it will be a full day!  I guess I will keep savouring this coffee for a bit longer.

There are two places I wish to share with you today:  My friend George Breed's Zen Baptist blog and my favorite photographer Dave Brosha.

First, George.  I've been following him online for a long time.  As long as I've been blogging, so since about 2004 I guess.  In the world of the internet that is an eternity!  And George is always meta-morphing, although he would prefer you call it meat-morphing.  He reminds me to see the world in new ways.  To examine and change these superficial belief systems we hold on to.  On a deep level that I don't always have words for, he refreshes me at a soul level.  Thank you, George!  Next year when I'm on sabbatical (sounds so decadent when in fact I'm running away for a year without pay) I may take a road trip to where he lives and stalk him in person. Be warned!

And for more soulful good stuff check out Dave Brosha.  God how I love his work!  I briefly got to meet him in September when I made a quick trip to Yellowknife.  I am inspired by his creative eye.   Especially his interpretation of the north.  If you like his work and are on facebook you can "like" him and get almost daily updates of his latest photo shoots.  It triggers something really good inside of me to see someone doing what they love and sharing that gift with the world!

Take care my friends.  The weekend is on its way!

Thank Goodness!

Today was a substantially productive day!  I feel so accomplished!  It was one of those days that just leaves you feeling satisfied with how it all went down.  Like you won, even though there wasn't an actual game.

When you define yourself, you are essentially building fences and walls.  And casting in structure form who and what you think yourself to be.  You create a double-sided list of what you consider permissible and what you do not.  And this list gets extended to everyone you encounter.

Are you setting up relationships to fail before you even give them a chance?

Examine your building material.

Gardening

Within us all there is this deep seeded need to tell the truth.  To be a truth-teller.

It is not about individual white lies or black lies, but about the lies we live out in our life's drama in front of the crowd.  In front of ourselves.  In front of the people we love and are afraid will not love us back if they knew the truth.

We worry that they wouldn't be able to handle it if we stopped flocking with all the other sheep.

But while we are talking about truth, remember the audience.  Those that surround us in our circles of family, friends and acquaintances are all playing our their drama too.  And mostly they are living embodiments of their own webs of untruths.  We become these tightly intertwined works of art in which it is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. They believe us and we believe them.  

And what if we are all telling stories?  Making-believe to make the others happy?  To make each other feel safe in fabrications and falsehoods?  Which serve only to disintegrate us from the inside out.

Zen Buddhists think of the mind as a garden.  Within the garden are the seeds of everything ~ all of the good and all of the bad.  It is the job of the gardener to cultivate which seeds will blossom and thrive, which in turn makes up the bouquet of living.

What if you started today to tell the truth about those parts of yourself that weigh on your heart?  That are reminders that you're not quite on the right path?  That whisper in your ear possibilities.  That there's more than this.  What if today you changed your drama and the way it is playing out?  What is keeping you from it?

Every time you live your purpose a little closer to the truth you free not only yourself but those around you.  In giving yourself permission to be who you are, you in turn permit others.  You change the composition of your garden.  New things bloom.

Lead your own story.  Courage builds courage and is very contagious!

Tuesday

It's only Tuesday, but still, it has been a great week.  And I'm torn 50/50 in this very moment between blogging and reading.  I picked up a Deepak Chopra book on Saturday titled The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire and I want to delve head first with a snorkel so I don't even have to come up for air.

And so it would seem that the book just won out.  Keep your chin up and your heart chakra strong.  xo

Just for a Minute

Refuse to be defined.  Stop defining yourself.  Resist listening to the way others want to tell you who you are and what you like.  You're so much more than all of that.

Just try living for a while.  Let it be what it's gonna be.  Allow it to surprise and delight you.

Going Back in Time

I was in the tub, thinking about synchodestiny... because that's what everyone thinks about while having a hot soak, right!?  When a fleeting picture of us as kids reeled through my mind.  I was about 7 or maybe 8 and wearing a white cotton dress.  It was a beautiful summer's day and the sky was blue.  We were running through a field, you pulling me along by the hand.  I was laughing out loud and it was slowing us down.  You looked back at me and beamed with delight.  The wind seemed to be blowing just strong enough to keep my long blonde hair out of my face.  We saw each other so clearly, like we spent our lives looking for the adventure in each day.

And I know it was you.  Were we sharing in some secret plan?  Or perhaps we had just played a prank and were running away before they found out what we had done?  Whatever the case may be, I was exuberantly joyful.  Finding myself, even now, please to have shared in such high spirits.

Most curiously, I can't help but wonder which of our lifetimes together this was?  I know for certain it is not from this one.  For we have yet to begin this time around.

Rilke

I love the dark hours of my being,

My minds deepens into them.

There I can find the days of my life,

as in old letters, already lived, 

and held like a legend, and understood.

...

Then the knowing comes.