A golden key to freedom...

It has been my experience, in my own life and also working with others as an intuitive healer, that even just looking for a positive light new perspective, and/or a positive new possibility or two, can bring a shift in any situation, sometimes a big one. 99.9% of us have brains that can spin out negative thoughts at any given moment… so what. Truly, no matter how negative our thoughts get, it only takes a few light thoughts to keep the momentum floating up, because consciousness truly is the foundation of everything and consciousness is love. So even your negative thoughts are consciousness, just like everything else. A bit like the poem Footprints in the Sand, even when we feel we are in our darkest times, Divine Grace will always float us up.

Worrying about negative thoughts is a bigger problem than the negative thoughts themselves, in my opinion. For me, when I am able to accept them as simply a part of my thought process I feel much more at ease immediately and I can then process and release them more quickly. Knowing that my faith, the many positive thoughts I have and all of the moments of love and gratitude that I feel throughout my day already float everything up feels most accurate in my heart. Nothing will keep us from having any negative thoughts, or difficult times, contrast is an important part of our experience. Trusting in the nature of consciousness, trusting Divine Grace in any form, trusting the love and gratitude in our hearts… no negative thought can weigh down the light that even one tiny drop of that kind of thinking creates in our lives. That is my experience anyway. Nothing is more powerful than asking Divine Grace, in whatever form feels close to our heart, for help to keep our lives on track and trusting that it is. 

I learned from my gurus to believe that everything happens for a reason, for my highest good, as a child. Holding that belief is a brilliant antidote to any negative thinking because it spirals literally everything up. It inspires ultimate trust and gives us the space to be human, to make mistakes, to have negative thoughts and experiences and still have wonderful amazing light filled lives. In my experience, the beliefs we hold have a lot more power in what creates our world than our thoughts do. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for reframing, finding new perspectives, and opening doors to new brighter possibilities, but finding and maintaining foundational understandings that support us to have faith and to trust the world that we live in is a golden key to freedom.

There is a bonfire in your heart...

I recently found the following words written in the middle of an old empty journal. I wrote it on August 24, 1997. I don't remember writing it, it really took me by surprise. I cry every time I read it. I can only guess that I had a rather powerful meditation and then grabbed the nearest journal and wrote this down to be found later... as in now, ha ha ha. 

When I first read this it was unbelievably perfect timing... that has always been my experience of Gurumayi in my life. I met her when I was ten, I think. She was Malti then, not a Swami yet, but she gave me shaktipat all the same the moment that I met her... and has lived in my heart ever since, and quite possibly even before that day.

I want to share this for myself, and maybe also for those of you who feel to read it. I think there are words in it that are true for all of you, not just for me. So I offer this from my heart to all of you. We are all love, no matter what we may think about ourselves... we are all love, every one of us, at our core, through and through. 

Here is what I wrote:

August 24, 1997

Thank you Gurumayi

These are messages I received today from Gurumayi, my guru.

You are always pure gold, I have always seen you this way.

Giving and receiving happen without effort if you just relax.

You have always been worthy of all you have received.

I am always with you and you are always with me.

You are Love, everyone else has always seen this, allow yourself to see it now.

There is a bonfire in your heart, if you go there you will be reminded.

Have patience with yourself, you will find your way there.

I love you!

Contemplating the practice of consciously choosing our information intake.

I've been contemplating the practice of consciously choosing the information and perspectives that I connect with and the factors I use to decide. How it feels emotionally, heavy or light. Does it feel like love, solution, expansive, freedom? Is it helping me support what feels accurate and helpful in my own heart for me? Does it feel like freedom or does it feel confining? How is my body reacting to the information and what does that mean. For those of us that believe that everything is consciousness, that can really only be the one true fact because consciousness is 100% malleable, so everything that it creates is as well. Embracing that understanding changes the way we navigate. The emotions that any experience or information brings up can be shifted when the experience or information is reframed. That obviously will work in either direction, which is one reason that meditation can be very helpful. It teaches us to observe our thoughts without entangling ourselves in the story so we are able to see our patterns and decide what is still working for us, and what has become outdated and can be reframed and or released.

Consciously practicing reframing information towards lighter perspectives can be what some people call finding the silver lining, or even just realizing that our information or perspective could actually be totally wrong, or outdated. That is one reason that I love to find out that I am wrong about things, to have new information shift my own perception completely. That retrains my brain to let go of things that are no longer serving the momentum that I am wishing to keep in my life towards lighter, more fun, more easeful perspectives.

It can be very easy to open up to this when you realize that being wrong can be such a wonderful gift to us, right? It can be a happy surprise! I have worked with many people that have held the understanding that being wrong was a negative thing, that being right was always best. That is clearly learned behavior because it is obviously only the ego that cares about such things. The heart loves to learn, to grow, to be surprised and opened to new possibilities. So the heart loves to be ‘wrong’, ha ha ha. Obviously, there is no such thing as right or wrong on a higher level of understanding, but when being wrong can be a joyful experience and offer us the feeling of freedom when we find new information that feels right in the now. So being wrong is a beautiful thing!

Years ago I read about Buddha heads being cut off of statues in Asia by colonials, to make them easier to transport. What I read gave the impression that this was the only reason that Buddha heads existed. So for years, I had a bit of a weird and negative feeling about Buddha heads. I recently found out that is not true, that Buddha heads symbolize the Buddha’s enlightened state and the wisdom and wealth of knowledge that he attained. Yay for being wrong! Ha ha ha! I am not interested in information that opens me to fear but I will always welcome new information that gives me a more positive, fun and light perspective on anything!

It has been my experience that internal guidance and the enlightened beings that I have known do not tend to give warnings, plant seeds of fear, or point at anything we are not wanting in our lives. They might point out or bring to the surface fears we already have so that we may walk through them and overcome those fears. That is where practicing reframing really becomes incredibly helpful, ha ha ha. Reframing with humor is one of the best ways to lighten things up quickly. Finding the humor in any situation is a fantastic gift we can give ourselves. Think of Laughing Buddha, finding the humor in everything is incredibly powerful. It has been my experience that internal guidance always shows us where we are wanting to go. It shows us open doors, solutions, exciting new possibilities and redirects us using light and sparkle, rather than giving obstacles attention and focus. I know that I am hearing my internal guidance when I am in the throes of fear, and suddenly a lighter perspective explodes the darker one and gives me a wonderful laugh or burst of joy.

The momentum of higher perspectives is always from love and a deeper understanding of the nature of reality. The higher perspectives are obviously more planted in the knowledge of the play of consciousness, of the illusion, the maya, the vibrational nature of our world. The vibrational nature of our world makes it completely malleable, vibrating energy is not stuck, it is not solid. Solid is an illusion that we enjoy, it helps us experience our world more fully. It helps us play and learn and feel the confinement that then gives us the wonderful experience of freedom! And that is why the only truth is that everything is simultaneously true and not true. And that is why information is only as useful as it’s ability to support our chosen experiences, our goals, our dreams, our heart journeys.

That is why I try to be aware of the information and perspectives that I open myself up to and to find a way to either politely walk away, or set a boundary if necessary. If I find myself dealing with something that is creating fear I will work to reframe it, to find a silver lining or perspective that releases the fear. At times I have even been able to flip information completely, into information that actually shows me the true nature of the world as I see it… Love. When I am able to do that, it is the most wonderful experience of all. It is my understanding and experience that Divine Grace is pure consciousness, everything is made of consciousness and Divine Grace is Love, so everything is Love. That understanding gives me the ability to find my way through very difficult experiences and find my way back to my heart.

Again, that is why meditation and various present moment practices can be so useful. Being able to pause, observe our thoughts and emotions in the moment helps us figure out which information feels like it is supporting us, supporting our hearts. It actually helps us to get to know our own hearts, to find out what inspires us and gives us actual joy. Boundaries are incredibly useful in this world where we all are so excited to share our experiences and perspectives with each other. That is a beautiful and wonderful desire, however, our experiences and perspectives will not serve everyone the way that they serve us. Understanding that brings so much freedom to us, to our relationships and to our world. When we understand this, communication can be so much simpler, in both directions. Judging ourselves and others, and also taking things personally becomes more and more silly when we genuinely understand this, and that right there is such a wonderful freedom! Finding silliness can be the most wonderful cure for so many issues in life, ha ha ha.

Ok, I guess that is my piece for today so… peace out everyone! Love and silliness to all y’all.

Love Is Always The Answer

I edit my posts, comments, etc., quite often and sometimes I even delete them entirely. I do this because I try to make sure that the things that I am putting out to the world are coming from love, from my heart, from an inspired place. I grew up with a spiritual teacher that taught me that intention is everything and that love is the highest intention, as well as the most effective way through… everything. So, when I come across something that feels like a 'problem’ I try to stay in my heart and to look for solutions. When I see things that I just really don't like, I try to simply hide them without judgement. Love accepts everything, light and dark, equally, that is the nature of love, obviously. For me personally, staying in my heart and in an inspired place means keeping my focus on the things that shine, keeping the company of people who hold love and inspiration as their intention, and not indulging my ego’s whims.

That being said, I believe that everyone's path is perfect for them, I genuinely do, I’m not just saying that. We are all beautiful works of art in a state of perpetual transformation and transformation requires cycles of both creation and destruction. Because of that, none of us can know what is best for another. It is on each one of us to feel our way through this crazy life and to either listen to our hearts, or not, if that is where we are at. I was taught at an early age that everything happens for the best, and that’s how I choose to see the world, through the eyes of faith. That choice has always worked well for me, perhaps if it hadn’t I might not feel as I do, hard to say. My choices are only what I feel are best for me though, not anyone else, unless they feel it for themselves.

I believe in all of this because it's what I learned from my spiritual teacher from an early age, but also because it is what I have observed in my life and the lives of many other people that I know as well. Holding this understanding, for me, requires being comfortable with contrast, and owning how invaluable it is, and always has been, to my own process of transformation. All of the challenges in my life help me to become more and more resilient and I value resilience pretty highly. Also, all of my experiences have made me who I am today, and I actually do love my perfectly imperfect self. I am not always successful at keeping myself aligned with my heart, and that is actually a good thing too because it keeps me humble… well hopefully! Ha ha ha.