Sunday, February 2, 2014

Dear Philip Seymour Hoffman,

In addition to your films, I feel incredibly blessed to have seen you in the stage productions of Sam Shepard's, True West and Chekhov's, The Seagull in New York City. You're one of my favorite actors of all time! You've made made me laugh and cry as much if not more than any other performer - and in both instances I owe you for expanding my capacity to love. Thank you Philip! And you can understand why perhaps the news of your death earlier this morning came as quite a shock and left me with a bit of heavy heartedness. Knowing what I know, I feel quite sure that your being, your identity outside the physical form continues. I'm comforted by that. Yet instances such as this have to give me (and hopefully others) pause for thought, an opportunity to contemplate some of the signs of our times. It was a Saturday night. I'm not sure about New York City, but here in southern California, the night sky was filled with stars and I stood admiring them for some time. My husband and I danced like crazy to Pharrell Williams' new song Happy in our livingroom. Neither of us have any notoriety to speak of and the bank account isn't a source of security to lean on. Yet we found joy and a reason to live in the stars and a silly song. At the same time, you, with more money than you could spend in a life time and more fame than most will ever experience, thought your best option was a drug and a needle. Why? You live under the same stars. I feel sure if you had an awareness of your value, you would've made a different choice. Your thought would have gone beyond you. You would've remembered, if nothing else, that there was someone or something that you could have helped in some way in that moment. Once again you leave us with yet another example of someone who feels the emptiness of having "everything" the world convinces us we need to feel good, to feel loved, to feel satisfied. But over and over again history has shown us that this isn't the case - think Elvis, John Belushi, Whitney Houston - but for some reason we keep falling for it. Jim Carrey, who would know as well as anyone said:

“I hope everybody could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know that its not the answer.”

So often those of us who are committed to magnifying good and making a difference in the world focus our energies on those who are materially poor - who lack food, shelter, and what we consider basic necessities. Though, many studies show that often those people are among the most genuinely happy in the world. We forget about offering our support - even if that support is in the form of a prayer or healing meditation - to those who are spiritually poor, empty on the inside, who have gotten it all and still fill depraved because they've never found their connection to the only thing that matters. Where is there to go from there? What predicament that must be.

I have a heart. I'm walking this earth so I cannot help but shed some tears and feel deeply for you. But as one who is committed to light, I will use your example to remind me how blessed I am that I can feel pure delight when my bare feet touch a blade of grass, that I still notice the trees, and have a deep desire to help others and make a difference in the world. I could have chosen your path. I have all the human reasons to support that if I wanted to build a case. But I won't. I gave myself to the Light a long time ago. And there is no turning back.

I will always CELEBRATE your work, your amazing gifts. I will hold you up in my consciousness as one who continues and who ultimately WILL find freedom, will find the fountain not made by the hands of men (to paraphrase The Grateful Dead song). I'll remember to help the spiritual have-nots as much as the material have-nots and I hope those who have everything will never forget the simple pleasures of life and if they ever have a similar inclination on a Saturday night, I hope they will choose differently.

There is nothing wrong with having things as long as the things are in addition to, not instead of, a deep sense of self-worth born of feeling connected to Source, to Spirit, God, the Universe - whatever you name it. There is no substitute.
Journey on Philip, journey on.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Inner to Outer - Buddha, Jesus, and Deepak Chopra

Here's the question I swim in everyday -- Do my thoughts reflect my circumstances or do my circumstances reflect my thoughts? I wonder pretty continually which is more real my vision or my circumstances.

Contemplating this notion, on the trail under the bright blue southern California sky, I started to hear Buddha, Jesus, and Deepak Chopra giving me some clues. I really did! I know I'm weird. Nonetheless, when I got home, as I often do, I had to jot down and research what came to me in bits and pieces outside. Here's what those nature-induced nudges lead me to...

Buddha:

"The mind is everything. What you think you become."

"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think."

Jesus:

"If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you!"

Deepak Chopra:

"The tangible springs from the intangible, and that intangible is what we are and what we call God."

"...there is a growing community of theorists seriously thinking about a conscious universe."

"The creative function of consciousness in quantum mechanics was originally outlined in the Copenhagen Interpretation which says that an observer is required in order to collapse the wave function into a single occurrence and produce a measurable outcome."

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/buddha.html#HJKjTdmtRQREbtwQ.99

560 BC we become what we think, 30AD the mental quality of faith can move something as solid as a mountain, and 2010 an observer determines whether the wave slows down to a particle. It seems whether we're under a tree, on a hillside, behind a microscope, or in my case on a yoga mat, one thing that evolution cannot evade is the connection between internal mental forces and external material experiences.

At present as a yoga student and a yoga teacher, I spend a lot of time exploring what happens in the mind and to the body on a 24x71 inch piece of fabric. Experiencing and seeing the mind (internal)/body (external) connection in this small microcosm keeps me alive to the same possibility in the wider scope of human experience. When I say to a group of students "widen you collar bones" and they actually widen - something physiologically impossible - I get very excited. Or when balancing on one leg, I say "have confidence in your strength" and witness 98 - 100% of the bodies in the room immediately look stronger, lift higher, get their leg more straight - then I know firsthand that we embody what we think about.

And I'm going to take what may seem like a huge leap to some here and say that not only does the inner vision affect outward circumstances, but that the inner vision is more real. It's the primary stuff that our circumstances reflect. If thought were the tree then circumstances would be its shadow. That explains how the mind of the observer determines whether the wave collapses into a particle. That's the how the thought force of faith Jesus spoke of could move something as fixed, huge, and solid as a mountain. This is tough to accept sometimes even though I have witnessed numerous times this phenomenon in action and intellectually see how it is so. Still I consistently find myself going back to assuming and believing that everything is happening to me instead of reflecting my own beliefs back to me. From this premise I misdirect my energy toward the very arduous and rarely successful task of changing people, places, and things.

Now what I'm coming to understand is that the best use of my will is in disciplining, molding, and directing my thoughts. Some might call it cultivating mindfulness or being intentional. I'd say it includes those things for sure. I also think it goes beyond thinking up personal goals and then using my mind to make them happen. I love the take on desire I recently discovered in the writings of Wallace Wattles. To paraphrase, he talks about desire being the force of Life trying to express itself through and as you. From what I understand, intuition is how that "Life force" speaks to me. My role is to keep the channels open and clear through whatever practices facilitate that for me. Once I'm tuned in and hearing and feeling those deep inner nudges, I can use my will to keep my mind focused on what those are, what it looks like, what it feels like - even in the midst of circumstances that are completely the opposite. As I do this consistently, the outer begins to reflect the inner back to me.

A yoga student's chest widening and opening at the mention of collar bones widening is the same process by which someone can bring their life's purpose, a companion, or a healthy body into being. The trouble usually is that in the space-time continuum the latter things require more persistence and accustom as it is to relying on the outer for confirmation, we give up too soon and assume it's just not working or it's not possible. The term "spiritual warrior" is one I find myself resorting to quite a bit to awaken me from status quo, common sense, group mentality kind of thinking. In this case, I would say a spiritual warrior is one who holds the vision NO MATTER WHAT. It's that "no matter what" mentality that ultimately allows the vision to manifest. If we can't be volleyed back and forth and pushed around, then the things that would do that are going to stop knocking.

My wish for anyone who reads this is that they trust, trust, trust that their vision is more real than their present circumstances. If you're engaging in the practices that keep the channels open, you will be guided and nudged towards that which serves the greatest good for you and all. Then you must use your will to dwell there in your mind consistently until the inner becomes the outer - NO MATTER WHAT. It will happen. Trust it now.

Resources:
http://www.letusreason.org/Cult11.htm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/will-the-god-particle-rep_b_625751.html
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/chopra/article/Did-God-discover-the-God-particle-3705245.php#page-2
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/will-the-god-particle-rep_b_625751.html
http://biblehub.com/luke/17-6.htm

The mind is everything. What you think you become.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/buddha378282.html#tmuZb7B57zt25dxd.99

Monday, November 18, 2013

Breaking Your Sound Barriers

Yesterday I was on the phone with a friend describing some turbulence I'd been experiencing in my life the past couple of weeks. I found myself saying, "whenever I'm on the brink of expansion, it seems there's this huge backlash of drama." This prompted her to tell me about Chuck Yeager, the Air Force pilot credited with breaking the sound barrier in 1947. She explained how the shock waves approaching the sound barrier sent many retreating in fear; but once the sound barrier is past, there's quietness and a smooth ride. Upon hearing this I felt a physiological release throughout my whole body. I LOVE metaphors and this was the perfect one for what I had been experiencing. I spent a few hours researching the experiences of Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager who's popularity peaked in the 1980's with the publication of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, and it's movie adaptation a few years later.

The History Channel's Modern Marvels episode in 2003 gleaned some powerful insights from Yeager's adventures, explaining that "...by flying supersonic (faster than the speed of sound), the X-1 (airplane used in the expedition) was pushing through sound waves before they could return to buffet the airplane." This is why there was such calm on the other side of the sound barrier. One of the researchers describing the event noted that "...what we really had was not a sonic barrier in the sky, but an informational barrier." "The wall many thought was unbreakable turned out to be largely a construct of ignorance and fear," was another astute observation.

Looking at these physical forces as representations of thought forces has given me some pretty empowering information. Expansion often looms as an impenetrable sound barrier in one's life. As we approach it, there's an agitation that causes our circumstances and sometimes even our bodies to experience buffeting (being struck, forced, moved, or attacked by repeated blows). Thanks to many who have gone before, have overcome the resistance to expansion, we can know even while we're going through it that it isn't a physical barrier but an informational one - largely a construct of ignorance and fear. This awareness cultivates courage to continue stepping into the airplane of spiritual study and practices such as meditation (still or moving), prayer, time in nature, whatever dials you in so-to-speak, and lifts thought to higher altitudes and vibrations. This puts us ahead of resistance's buffetings and allows us to experience settled calm in the midst of expansion's wake.

Steven Pressfield reassures with his benevolent understanding of the phenomenon of resistance in this way:

"The massive shadow that you’re experiencing is being cast by an equally massive tree—the tree of your dream, your vision, your calling. Resistance has no power of its own. It’s a shadow, nothing more. As soon as we learn to look past the shadow to the Dream that has cast it, the shadow loses all power over us."

As each individual consciousness is educated beyond ignorance and fear, we, like the blade of grass, can comply with Nature's nudging to "grow, grow" and break the metaphorical sound barriers of our own lives however they appear. HAPPY FLYING!