When I went to the clinic, I felt good that I was finally taking care of it. Checking it off my list. While the nurses checked me in and got me set up for the procedure, I cracked jokes, making them all laugh. While going under the anesthetic I said, “There it is…I can feel it. I’m going under...”

Some unknown amount of time later, I awoke the recovery room, eyes not ready to open, I listened to sounds of the room around. As I became more alert, I eventually opened my eyes to watch. Laying there watching and listening I slowly became more present.

“Alan, do you know what color car your ride is driving?”, a nurse asked me from across the room.

I answered, “White. She is expecting a phone call when it is time to pick me up.”

“It looks like she is already here.” the nurse said. “I just called her and she said she was waiting.”

I would be going home soon, I was waiting to meet with the doctor. He would tell me how things went.

I remember what my doctor said after my first colonoscopy, “You’re all set – I could put a gold star on your forehead – I don’t need to see you for another ten years!” And while it has been more than ten years, I expected another “gold star” from this doctor. Or did I?

The doctor walked into the recovery area and looked around. After he saw me he headed my direction. I noticed my anxiety jump. I had no doubt that I would receive a clean bill of health up till that moment as a little doubt creeped up. Dr. B asked me how I was feeling and told me, “everything checked out…couple polyps…pathology…nothing to worry about…five year plan.”

What? Five year what? What is that? And where were my gold stars?

In that moment, I realized that I could have just as easily been hearing “bad news” as “good news.” When exactly had I made a decision to receive a good report?

Over the past 14+ years since my last screening – how much of that time was I living from a decision to care for my health and body? Have I made such a decision? Did my actions in the way I have treated my self and my body worthy of “gold-stars?” And was I really surprised to hear “five year plan?”

As he walked away, an image of myself five years in the future flashed in my mind – I saw myself laying in that same bed…do I want to be in the same situation to honestly not know (based on my actions) what the doctor would be telling me?

I didn’t like the feeling that image provoked. Do I want that to be my experience five years from now? What decision have I made for it to be one way or the other?

My future is the result of what I am living in my present now. I am deciding to live in a way now that will produce the future with results I expect. I am deciding for more gold stars.

I have found that drawing a tangle repeatedly helps one to “know it by heart”. When I draw it from that space I find myself in the flow, and it feels like those tangles want to be drawn. Or I’m just enjoying the ink and graphite on paper!

I love this tangle (Fescue?) It’s fun to draw.

When I think about that it causes me to reflect on what and who I am currently being in the world.

I have to ask myself:

“Am I fully expressing the purpose for which life has brought me here – to express Life as only I can? What am I adding to the collective consciousness? Am I letting my light shine?”

If not – why not?

The Light that I allow to expand within me and to express through me both matters and makes a difference to the Whole, because we are all parts of this One Life.

What we do and don’t do, matters to the Whole. How we treat others and ourselves matters…how we treat all the parts of our self…it all makes a difference to the Whole.

May I accept the importance of my presence in the world. And the responsibility I have to express all of me that is here to be witnessed and to witness.

Who would I be if I knew that my every need IS met? That I know that every desire is a promise waiting to be claimed? Knew that I am greater than any task before me? What action would I take if no one and nothing is against me?

I accept more for my self and for all in the world. Wholeness, wellness, abundance is our natural state. May we all live that life now.

While preparing for my morning’s “formal mindfulness practice” (seated meditation), I noticed my coffee on the table next to me. I decided to have one last swig before I settled in to meditate. As I reached for the mug of I intended to do a “microhit” of mindfulness. I was going to that sip my full attention. The next moment felt as if it slowed down as I brought the mug to my mouth. Seeing my reflection across the surface of the dark liquid, smelling the roasted beans, feeling its warmth as I swallowed the mildly bitter brew. The sensation of myself lowering the mug to the table. I won’t forget that sip of coffee.

It’s interesting when life offers us something to work with, even when we didn’t ask for it. A couple of nights ago, I read a line – or I might had heard it randomly on YouTube, but it went something like this:

If we don’t need to eat animals to live a long, healthy life, then why do we?

Since then – it has been going round and round in my head. My brain trying to provide a real answer. Up till now everything appears to be a rationalization instead of a reason. Another way I define “rationalize” is to RATION – LIES.

While I was raised in a lacto-ovo vegetarian home as a child, I don’t live in one now – and honestly I wasn’t planning on it. I’m not sure what will become of this, what feels like a moral dilemma.

Some of the “reasons” I have come up with:

1. I feel better eating meat.

2. “Paleo is how we evolved.” (I used to follow a Paleo diet for awhile.)

3. It tastes good!

4. It’s convenient.

All of these seem pretty weak.

This past month I have speaking about letting Love pointing the way – love does no harm – Ahimsa (non-violence)…it brings a different perspective to the question or maybe more to help me with the answer.

I’m interested in seeing where this goes.

“What you are seeing and hearing right now is nothing but a dream.”

While it may sound like he is suggesting that nothing around us is real or grounded in reality, and in a manner of speaking he is suggesting that – the MEANING that we give to what we are seeing and hearing around us is nothing but a dream. Our perception of what we are experiencing, the story we tell, is simply story in our own heads like a dream. And if you have ever experienced a lucid dream, where you are aware that you are dreaming during the dream – if you consciously change one element, the entire dream or story changes. This is the similar to our experience of life – we get a new piece of information added to the mix and all of a sudden what we knew to be TRUE now becomes another truth. And this is the beauty of the Four Agreements: they allow us to question the meaning that we are giving to what we are observing and allow a new meaning to emerge – one that is alignment with who we really are vs. some B.S. (belief system) that someone else told us it means.

It is important to examine what we have been programmed with (domesticated) because the B.S. that is operating in our minds operates much like a software program – it is running in the background that does what it has been instructed to do with whatever input it receives. Ruiz writes,

“The belief system is like a Book of Law that rules our mind. Without question, whatever is in that Book of Law, is our truth. We base all of our judgments according to the Book of Law, even if it these judgments go against our own inner nature…One by one, all these agreements go into the Book of Law, and these agreements rule our dream.”

Through our life experience, at the times our attention gets “hooked” by a situation and those around us offer us their thoughts – when we enter into agreement with it – it becomes a belief and is “entered” into our Book of Law. And where there is law – we also have a Judge to let us know when the law has been broken. The Judge is that part of our self that keeps us in line (or safe – depends on perspective). It lets us know when we have done well or when we’re “bad” – we are judged on our Book of Law, which is made up of the agreements we have made throughout our life, many if not most, written in our Book of Law while we were still children. Ruiz says that 90% of what we believe isn’t even true. TRUTH is not a pre-requisite to be in our Book of Law. Isn’t it time to let the Truth in?

Many choices I made as a child no longer serve me where I am in my life now. If I am going to live a conscious life, I need to stop living from unconscious agreements and beliefs. There is a verse in the Bible that says:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. (1 Cor. 13:11)

In order for me to really practice the Four Agreements, I need to take some time get clear on what are some of the agreements that I have made that show up in my B.S. – my Book of Law.

Not that everything from the past needs to be put away with, but there might be messages that no longer serve me like: “…be seen and not heard”, “don’t talk to strangers”, ”family is the only ones that can be trusted”, etc…There are beliefs that I am accountable for to the Judge that I no longer agree with, but only with awareness do I have the power to choose.

In the next post, I will share with you a process that I am using to explore my own Book of Law.

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I remember the first time that I read it. It was such a breath of fresh air. While it made so much sense, it was also practical. It reminded me of who I am and the power that I do have. I loved it.

Well, it has been more than a couple years since I’ve read, The Four Agreements, but after some recent experiences I have had in my personal life which have caused me to look up and take notice on whats going on around me…really take notice…I decided that it was time for me to reacquaint myself with these four simple ideas which each one on its own can create a dramatic shift in our experience.

The subtitle of the book reads: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom and I believe FREEDOM is something that we are all seeking because it is a key quality of our nature as spiritual beings…freedom. And for there to be any lasting change, if its not practical then how likely it is to be embraced and made part of our way of life?

In the Introduction of The Four Agreements, Ruiz tells a story about a human who was studying to become a medicine man and while studying he felt that “there must be something more” – and it is that that had brought me back to the Four Agreements.

The medicine man had a realization:

“Everything in existence is a manifestation of the one living being we call God. Everything is God. And he came to the conclusion that human perception is merely light perceiving light. He also saw that matter is a mirror — everything is a mirror that reflects light and creates images of that light — and the world of illusion, the Dream, is just like smoke which doesn’t allow us to see what we really are. “The real us is pure love, pure light,” he said.”

This is the TRUTH about all of us – love and light. All of us. All. Even those that I don’t agree with, and even those that I have difficulty equating with either love or light. If we are all love and light – then why do I have trouble believing it? It goes back to the Dream – the world of illusion.

“They couldn’t see him as themselves because there was a wall of fog or smoke between the mirrors. And that wall of fog was made by the interpretation of images of light – the _Dream_of humans.”

We don’t recognize the truth of about ourselves and others because of the Dream – this fog that is built of all the beliefs, assumptions, ideas, agreements, interpretations, speculations, suspicions, concepts, and perceptions, that have been accepted as reality by all that have every lived – and then handed off to us as “the way the world works” by those we looked to tell us the Truth. Our parents, guardians, teachers, politicians, ministers, those who “know”. It is part of the process that Ruiz refers to as “domestication.”

The mystic, Meister Eckhart, wrote:

“God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.”

For me this is what I find appealing about The Four Agreements is that is not about adding anything but releasing our hold onto the illusions. They come from the assumption that God is already right here in me, as me. I am that Love and Light and so are you…already…all ready. Practicing these new agreements is about living my life from that place of soul where God is – I don’t have to argue philosophy with someone or convince myself of an idea – I get to chose in each moment whether I’m living from the Dream (the beliefs and programming of others) or from the Truth of who I am.

Today, I look to who and what do I say I AM – how am I using the power of word and intention. Choosing to stay in my own lane without assumptions, knowing that I am doing the best that I can with what I have and where I’m at. I choose today to not let the Dream ADD or define my experience, but to let the Truth back of the Dream – the Love & Light – guide me into a greater experience of my freedom.