Tag Archives: life

consciousness

The Spice Girls Situation

Elementary Aged Katie

I ditched school in the fourth grade to see the Spice Girls with a friend and her older sister.  We waited outside in the freezing Chicago winter for hours and they never showed.  Worse still, as I arrived at school the next day all of my classmates were telling me how mad the teacher was that I had ditched.  I loved my fourth grade teacher.  She was a comfort and inspiration.  I am positive that I went on to study poetry in college because of her influence.  She read us poems that she had written to her mother, who had passed away.  She even cried in front of us.

I had never met another adult, who I wasn’t related to, who I felt so strongly connected to.  So on that shameful day after the botched Spice Girls escapade I felt lower than I had ever felt in my short life.  The second I saw her face I started to cry.  At that moment she held me tight in her arms and let me know everything was okay, she had just been worried about me.  She was loving, forgiving, and had expressed none of the anger my classmates had described.  But the idea of letting her down was traumatic.  It was so traumatic that I still remember the scene vividly in my mind’s eye even now as an adult.  And yet, this was not a traumatizing situation.  Now I think it’s pretty awesome that I skipped out on school to see the best band ever.  But in future, anytime a teacher showed the slightest sign of disapproval there was nothing I could do to keep from crying.

I remember getting a C on an important Spanish test in high school and running out of the room lest my teacher see how ridiculously distraught I had become.  The positive side effect of wanting to please my teachers was my straight A record in school.  Deeper than that is an issue common to many people, in many walks of life: the need to please.  For me, my need for approval came from the story that I told myself about how bad it felt when a teacher was angry with me.  My actions were motivated by trying to mitigate an imagined pain.

The stories we tell ourselves, and believe in, have tremendous power to shape our behavior and our lives.  What stories do you tell yourself? While not all stories are negative or fearful, such as “I am awesome and can do anything I put my mind to,” they still cannot compare to reality.  It is impossible to get a true experience of reality when it is seen and felt through the filter of a story in your mind. 

I can see in my own life that I could be held back, from relinquishing stories about myself, because of the fear of what life would really be like.  I might think that living out life according to a story I have about my life will protect me from something worse.  The problem with that logic is that it’s just another story.  True expansion, freedom, and possibility await right on the other side of your story.  The mind might feel lost, because you are letting go of thought forms, but you know that you are not your mind.  And no loss of thought, opinion, or story actually has any power to take away from you, because you are life itself.  You are the platform that allows stories to arise.

I never quite got over my need to please my professors; I ended up Suma Cum Laude in college.  But getting good grades never did anything to increase my learning, creativity, or fulfillment.  I only gained the temporary high of meeting the needs of the story I was telling myself about having to get good grades.  Life went on after my school years ended.  Those grades don’t mean anything anymore.  All that I am left with is my true self; greater than any story I could ever tell, and more abundant than any need I could ever conceive of.

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Inspiration

“In the moment of seeing, of noticing that your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, you are present.” – Tolle

Wind Tunnel

The first day of teaching for a new year of the after school program always leaves me thinking, “what just happened?”  Now sitting on a comfortable couch at home, I see the pull to hang on to the day.  To stay in the stress, to worry about what it will be like tomorrow.  But when I think about how I felt about the new year of programming this morning, before it at all began, I know I wasn’t worried at all.  I didn’t feel stressed about the prospect of the next class.

Even though the day has a magnetic pull, I can see that feeling like I did this morning would be a much more enjoyable way of being.  I can also see that feeling present and without worry didn’t effect the reality of the experience as it actually occurred.

Worry or not, the outcome is always the same.  The moment always comes to pass.  This is the moment where I have the opportunity to choose again.  Instead of succumbing to the attraction of holding on, I can choose to put down the thoughts of past and future, and return to the only place I will ever be, the present.

How do you feel when the day is done?  If you ever find yourself reliving the day over again in your head, create an experiment out of putting the day down, and allowing yourself to just be where you are.  After all, the only way to see if it feels better than a previous way of being, is to experience it.

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Inspiration

“There are no dark nights of the soul; there are only dark nights of the ego.” – Robert Holden

Shift Happens!

I saw this posted on Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Facebook page, and loved the clever way the words pointed towards the truth! When I experience pain, there is that still small voice at the back of my consciousness reminding me that suffering is created by the ego.  My true self is still whole; nothing can be given or taken away from being.  When in pain reminding myself that my attachment to the situation is causing the suffering, and that the situation already is how it is regardless of my reaction, a small space opens up around the pain that allows healing to work its way through.  To paraphrase Tolle, suffering is ego created but is ultimately ego destructive.  To say it another way, no matter what you are going through a world of greater peace and joy is perpetually blooming in the midst of the ashes.

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Inspiration

How can you tell if you’ve actually “let it go?”

skylineHow do you respond when someone tells you to, “let it go?”  I have been told, in many different contexts, to let something go, and often my response has been, “I will, but…” Which is to say, that I haven’t actually been letting go.  I’ve been learning that a true act of letting go contains far greater power than any reason not to ever could.

By letting go, you align yourself with the power of the universe.  You surrender to that unending stream of energy always flowing towards your highest potential.  So why don’t we let go more often?  Simply put, the thinking mind.  The mind needs thorough convincing to let go of anything.  To let go of a thought, an attachment, a grudge, or a question, the mind requires a foolproof argument to relinquish its firm grasp.  The thinking mind loses control over your life when you surrender and let go.  It doesn’t know a higher power will take the reigns; all the thinking mind sees is a life out of control, without any safety net.  Since the thinking mind is so bent on holding on, it is necessary to go beyond it to experience true surrender.  This means instead of convincing your mind to let go, you only need to convince your true self a more wondrous world is waiting for you on the other side of surrender.

How do you know if you’ve really let go?  When someone close to you has upset you and you decide to be the more conscious being and let it go, and think to yourself “Yes! I’ve let it go!” that is not surrender.  That is the thinking mind holding onto the concept of being more spiritually aware than others, and the idea of letting go.  You will know you’ve truly relinquished something when you feel a deep sense of peace, aliveness, and even joy that has nothing to do with your outer circumstance.

When you are having a disagreement with your partner, and no clear resolution has been found, but you feel completely at ease, you have surrendered.  This opens you up to being a vessel for solutions.  The universe has space to work through you to solve any problem you are experiencing, any dysfunction in the relationship.  Another sign that you have surrendered is that your compassion grows.  You can listen to your partner more deeply, without the voice in your head whispering internal judgments.  You can even understand a point of view you initially disagreed with.  Surrender offers unlimited potential for growth, expansion, peace, and love.

For me, writing this is a personal message to assist myself in surrender.  Although I am writing thoughts, they help to point me beyond my thinking mind to my true knowing.  There are many things in my life I can surrender to, like my work situation, my ideas about how my outer life should look, my opinions, and my ideas about how my loved ones should act.  And the only way to discover the miraculous consequences of surrender is to try it out.  What in your life can you let go of today?

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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:

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Inspiration

“The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.” – Eckhart Tolle

Night SkyWhat thoughts take you out of the present moment?  For me, when I experience thoughts of fear I find it easy to lose focus on what I’m doing, my attention completely taken up by the train of thought.  I was listening to Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth today and the following passage spoke so truly that it brought me right out of my thinking mind and into the present moment experience.  May it do the same for you:

The most important, the primordial relationship in your life is your relationship with the Now, or rather with whatever form the Now takes, that is to say, what is or what happens.  If your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, that dysfunction will be reflected in every relationship and every situation you encounter. The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment. It is at this moment that you can decide what kind of relationship you want to have with the present moment. (Tolle)

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Inspiration

Football as Spiritual Practice

Bears FootballThere was a buzz in the air of Chicago Sunday morning.  Football season had begun.  Yesterday was a great day for Bears fans. We won our game, and the Packers lost theirs.  Personally, I have never felt compelled by football.  That was until yesterday.

My boyfriend was so overjoyed all day, and I as I watched the multitude of fans on TV cheering from the stands I saw football in a new way.  Football has no utilitarian purpose.  It isn’t a necessity for survival. (Although I know some who would disagree.)  Football is a game.  And people love watching games.  They are full of joy.  While some describe it as an escape, I would venture to say that football is as real as any other aspect of life.  Humans brush their teeth, we eat food, we build ourselves shelters.  Games, art, creativity, and playing around are integral aspects to the human experience.  Our minds tell us that joy is not as important as survival.  This is because the mind doesn’t experience joy; you experience joy.  Meanwhile, survival thoughts are very real to the thinking mind, which thinks it has to control its environment to survive, that it has to fight and work hard.

Those thoughts are all very productive at providing momentum for the thinking mind.  Joy is not.  Often in moments of joy our minds become still, with all of our attention placed on the present moment experience.  These moments make being alive feel “worth it.”  Has the voice in your head ever questioned you when you decided to relax and do something purely for enjoyment?  Perhaps you sat down to read a book or listen to music, and your mind said something like, “You shouldn’t be doing this right now.  You have so much to do.”  Even though our thoughts are convinced those “other things” are more important than an experience of joy, we don’t have to buy into it.

I’m going to do an experiment, and I invite you to join in with me if it speaks to you.  Be alert the next time you do something just for yourself, with no end goal or purpose besides enjoyment.   If the voice in your head attempts to sabotage that joy, see what happens if you don’t take it seriously.  Maybe even smile or laugh at the thoughts trying to convince you there isn’t enough time for enjoyment.  After all, you cannot waste time.  Past and future exist for us right now as thoughts in our heads.  The only moment you’ll ever have to actually live through and experience is the present moment, right now.  And you have all the now in the world.

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spirituality

The Day The Universe Divulged My Secrets

One Way

For something new to come into your life, space has to be created. For example, if I want to have a new relationship with an acquaintance, but I already have set parameters about how we function together, there is no space for a new way of being together to arise. If you want to gain new understanding about your life, your work, the world, space must be created by releasing the old understanding. For me this translates into declaring out loud to the ether, “I don’t know anything!” Which is often followed by, “For real, this is crazy. I have no idea what is going on!” For you this may sound different.

By vocalizing that you do not understand, you create an opportunity for new understanding to present itself. This can also sound like, “I do not understand. Please show me!” Several years ago I experienced an incident on a city bus that prompted my declaration of “not-knowing.” It is not a story I tell at parties, because I still do not understand it. But the beauty of its consequence continually reveals a world more wondrous than I could have thought up.

As I was sitting on a bus one hot summer day in Chicago, I overheard two girls talking behind me. I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to them, but the conversation took an abrupt turn, and admittedly I went into full eavesdrop mode. They began telling my life story, the story that I told myself about my life at the time. It happened all of a sudden; in the middle of a normal conversation one of the girls started discussing a girl she knew. She described her relationships in detail. There were even timelines. What was more, she was telling the story of fear I had been operating on. There were tales of betrayal, mistrust, and secrets, along with the faults in this person’s character and how it was affecting her relationships. Although it is several years later, I cannot bring myself to recount the exact story the girl on the bus regaled to my eavesdropping ears, because it still feels too personal. Too many fears and perceived flaws divulged.

The story ended and the girls quickly exited the bus through the back door. I tried to get a glimpse of them. At first I thought, “Was that someone from my hometown? Did I go to high school with these people?” I couldn’t get a good look at them as the bus sped away. I was left completely and utterly baffled, and slightly afraid. There was no good explanation for the event.

I never found out who the girls were, whom they were really talking about, and why my life related so closely to the story. Logically, I knew it wasn’t an actual story about me. Then the question became, “Who has such a close life experience to my own?” I had never encountered such a mysteriously inexplicable moment in my entire life. After the initial horror that came from hearing my greatest fears spoken aloud to me on a city bus for all to hear, I reached a point where a decision had to be made. I could drive myself crazy by trying to find a logical explanation with my thinking mind, or I could let it go, and admit that I had no idea what was going on. Because it was such an unbelievable occurrence, I decided to relinquish my need to explain it away, and just not know.

That letting go, of the idea that I had to know everything, created the space that allowed my true self and a new way of experiencing life to begin to emerge. Life started to become more and more miraculous. I was able to relinquish past fears, because after all what did I know anyway? I was able to let go mistrust, and love the people in my life more fully than I had ever let myself before. From admitting that I did not understand, the universe began to show me new ways of understanding. When life showed me that I had no idea what was going on, it in turn started to present a new reality.

I had been putting restrictions on life. When you put parameters on the universe, you restrict the fullness of reality from presenting itself to you. You leave no room for your highest potential to manifest in your life. Over the years I have become comfortable with the “not-knowing.” What would happen if you let go of some of your own thoughts about how things are? What would life be like if you knew nothing about it, created no barriers? The simplest way to invite a new life situation your direction is to relinquish your firm understanding about how your current life is or should be.

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Peace

Experiencing Your Life, and 15 Seconds of Peace #2

clouds

Today I remember that everything is, and cannot be otherwise.  When you’re not attached to a thought in your mind about how your life “should” be, you are free to see and experience life as it really is with peace and equanimity.  What is more, life opens up for you when you are open to life.

This means that when you allow your present moment to be as it is, without demanding it conform to your ideas about it, it begins to flow with ease.  There are already solutions to any obstacle you may experience.  When you allow your present moment to be as it is, you offer space for those solutions to arise.  I try to remind myself in moments of stress, that if I let go the power of the universe will run its course, gently carrying me in alignment with my true purpose.

I am so excited to present the second “15 Seconds of Peace” video/music, created by my father, Peter Spero.  For me, this small glimpse of stillness helps reset the busy mind back to its natural state of peace.  I hope it speaks to you right where you are today:

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Peace

15 Seconds of Peace

World Inside The World

My brilliant and loving father, Peter Spero, created both the footage and music for this short peaceful getaway entitled “15 Seconds of Peace #1.”  My parents and grandparents have always appreciated the beauty of nature.  What is so fascinating about the natural world, is that it too is alive; yet without the separation created by the thinking mind, it is one with life.  Trees, plants, animals, they live and die in complete alignment and peace of being.  They never project themselves outside of the present moment.

We too can experience the peace of nature by relinquishing the rapt attention on our thoughts, and being one with the moment we are living in.  I hope that today this video gives you an experience of the infinite peace available to us all in the present:

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