Tag Archives: awareness

Inspiration

What are you looking for?

While this video originally served as a PSA for being aware of cyclists, and is absolutely hilarious, I found it to contain a great spiritual truth.  That is, if you aren’t looking for something, you are not going to see it.  When creating the reality you desire the first step is deciding what you are looking for.  Is it a compliment?  A deep conversation?  A Buggati?  Whatever it is you currently desire, look for it everywhere.  Don’t decide where the best place to look for it is.  Look up at the sky, look at the train passing by, look over your shoulder at the grocery store.  You don’t have to come up with the “how,” all you have to do is decide what you are searching for and go out there expecting to see it everywhere!

http://youtu.be/Ahg6qcgoay4

Thanks Marc and Angel Hack Life for sharing this video!

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Inspiration

“Anything that is usually a means to an end, make it into an end in itself.” – Eckhart Tolle

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and find that you cannot stop thinking?  Or perhaps you are already awake, just going about your day, and notice your mind won’t stop running in circles?  As humans, we are of one mind.  We all think.  This short video, with Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra, offers enlightening, practical ways to take momentum away from the thinking mind:

http://youtu.be/q5J4HbmVfvA

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consciousness, spirituality

The Irreversible Shift

The wonderful thing about awareness is that it cannot be undone. No matter what state you are in now, if at any point in your life you had a glimpse of an awakening, a moment of stillness, a feeling of deep peace beyond understanding, a moment of connection with another human being, you will always have that light of consciousness shining through the fog.

There have been moments in my life where I felt totally in tune, one with the moment, and at ease. Then at other moments I have felt off track, unsure, and out of balance. Those fluctuating states are happening in the foreground of my life, (as Tolle puts it), while the light of awareness still shines (however dimly it may seem) in the background. When things just don’t feel right, that peace you once experienced is not gone from you, and it is not shrinking. That gain in consciousness is still gaining, even when the foreground of life obscures it.

Now even when I get caught up in my thoughts and taken over by the ego I am conscious that it is temporary, a minute moment, soon to be replaced by the awareness still growing in power. Presence will always return. Rather, presence is always present, becoming brighter and brighter until you notice it.

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consciousness, spirituality

Today’s Take Away

I feel this last week’s lesson in “divine compensation” is very relevant today.  When someone takes something away from you, or harms you, the universe repairs itself by restoring to you what you lost in a new form.  The person who took from you will also get to experience the loss they facilitated in some form in their own life.  But to feel the peace of this knowing requires complete trust.  For me learning a lesson helps evoke this trust, which is why I write these posts.  I think we are all learning something about ourselves, and what our personal views of justice are, from the Trayvon Martin case.

Eckhart Tolle sends out “present moment reminder” emails and the one he sent out this week, from A New Earth, says, “Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.”  So today I look within, with an open mind, at the assumptions and attitudes I hold.  Where do I perpetuate injustice?  What assumptions and attitudes do I make about people who I don’t truly know?  When do I put the blinders on and stop seeing my human kin as brothers and sisters and instead treat them as “other”?  Without judging what I find, I am able to learn from myself.  From the higher vantage point of the watcher I can view the parts of me that do not operate from my true self, and find they dissolve in the light of awareness.

In the coming weeks I will begin to address the pain body, that energy created by past pain that lives within us and is added to when painful events are not fully accepted and let go of.  I feel that the recent events from Florida may add to this nation’s pain body.  Our collective pain body has surely been awoken, as can be seen on any social media outlet.  But it can be dissolved, by dissolving our own individual pain bodies.

I also find it very healing to remind myself that I am seeing current events from a very limited viewpoint and cannot judge what I see.  I have no idea for what purpose any event happens,  and labels such as “good” and “bad” are merely thoughts in my head.  For now, I think we could all use a bit of good news:

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consciousness, spirituality

The Bed Bug Incident Part 2

I never found out what had been causing those bites for so many months. But the situation developed when I learned a couple apartments in my building had bed bugs and were having exterminations. I freaked out. Freaking out is a good sign that you are totally taken in by a circumstance and cannot view it at the higher vantage point of the true self, the watcher which is unaffected by what “happens” and is always whole. I wasn’t being the watcher, I was being a body threatened by outside forces. I took many precautions after learning my neighbors had bed bugs, putting things in trash bags, keeping the lights on at night, spraying poison around my door. But to the universe all of those precautions were really just me saying, “I’m afraid of something, this bothers me, I’m totally attached and identified with this situation.” That was the truth of the matter. I hadn’t let go. I was clinging to circumstance.

I was living in fear of bugs. For you this experience might have manifested in another form in your own life. About a month after the bed bug incident I thought I was in the clear. Everything was going to be fine. And when the thought that everything will be fine occupies your mind, that can be saying that you don’t feel fine in this moment, the only moment you will ever actually be experiencing. That very week I woke up with bug bites. These were very different from the ones I had been having all year. There were multiple bites and they were on my upper body not my legs. I even had bites on my fingers. The only thing familiar about them was the terrible allergic reaction. But the itching was even worse. I called the exterminator to inspect, and sure enough I had bed bugs.

The morning I found out I fell to pieces. You would have thought a real tragedy had struck. I was distraught, beside myself. I felt completely contaminated, as if everywhere I went would become infected by bed bugs. I didn’t want to tell anyone, I didn’t want to hang out at other apartments. Mostly, I never wanted to return to my apartment ever again. I no longer cared about my stuff, I did not want any of it anymore. In my eyes, the place would be forever contaminated.

This is a great example of a strong reaction. My reaction was a clear message of the feelings, fears, and beliefs I had been holding onto ever since my first bad bite from October. It was now May, and there was no more fooling myself. I was completely attached to my outer circumstance, and when my outer circumstance did not fit with the picture I had in my head of what I needed to feel safe, comfortable, and at ease, I caused immense suffering for myself. Suffering is often created by the outer circumstance not matching up with your thought’s picture of how things “should” be. This cannot be reconciled by more thoughts. The only way to stop the self created suffering is to recognize the thoughts and how they operate. The thougths don’t really want problems to be solved, even though that is what they claim. They want to keep thinking, that is their whole life up there in your head. They just want to stay alive. So when the outer circumstance doesn’t match with the thoughts’ visions, your mind will take that opportunity and run with it. Literally run, you know how thoughts run on and on in your mind. It loves doing that. But you are the observer of your thoughts, you have the ultimate control once you recognize that they are not helpful and in no way actually improve the uncontrollable circumstance.

When you have thoughts like this that keep running and cause you great emotional suffering, become very alert. Say to yourself, “what is my next thought going to be?” and then watch your mind until one comes in (a great tool from Tolle’s The Power of Now). Don’t judge the thoughts, allow them, give them your fullest attention. In this way the light of your presence will shine through the illusion that your thoughts can help you with their insane ramblings. Another way to quiet down an insane thought pattern is to bring complete inner acceptance to your outer circumstance even though your thoughts don’t want you to. Allow a situation to be. It will be the end of the mind using you, and the beginning of you using the mind.

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consciousness

The Voice In Your Head

One day when I was a little girl both of my parents were going out and left my brothers and I with a babysitter.  I wanted to go with them and since I couldn’t I was completely beside myself, crying and crying.  My brothers were playing with the babysitter and I decided to go to my room so I could cry some more.  When inside my bedroom I looked at the large mirror over my desk and watched myself crying.  I stood there merely watching myself cry away, for how long I can’t remember.  But what does still stand out clear in my mind is a moment of stillness I experienced while watching myself in the mirror.  There came a point where I wasn’t thinking anymore.  I wasn’t even feeling sad anymore.  All I was doing was watching, there were no emotions left.  A few moments later, thoughts started arising once more, but they were no longer sad thoughts.  The thought I first remember coming back into my mind was, “I wonder if I cry long enough if I could be in the Guinness Book of World Records.”  I view this moment in my life as the beginning of my separation of true self from the voice in my head.  After that, the new word I had for that true self was the “watcher.”  I was aware on some level that who I was, was the watcher of the thoughts and circumstances.  Spiritual awakening begins by noticing that you are not the voice in your head.  I mentioned Michael Singer yesterday, and in this video he describes this separation, with Oprah on Super Soul Sunday.  Super Soul Sunday is my favorite show; it’s the only show on TV where these types of conversations are the main focus and point of the program.   I also highly recommend Michael Singer’s book, “The Untethered Soul,” which has become one of my favorites.  May this video spark a new awareness and peace for you!  Stay tuned for tomorrow’s continuation of “The Bed Bug Incident – Part Two.”

“Author Michael Singer says the voice inside your head that expresses doubts and worry is not you; it’s your deeper consciousness. Find out how Michael first realized what that voice was and how to separate what you’re not from what you are.”

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