To Give, You Must First Have

“To give, you must first have.” is this week’s contemplation. It seems a very obvious thing to state. In this world, if you are going to give somebody a present, you must first have the gift, before you can give it. Though the focus of the contemplation is of “mental” giving, the same rule applies. To offer a thought to someone, it first must be in your mind before you can give it. You have to have it to give it. It must come from you. Even though someone else triggers the thought, you are the source.

We want to make the outside world our “cause” and thus its “effect” becomes its responsibility. That stance is easy for the negative situations – you can be quite comfortable with other people or situations making you upset, but what about the love. What about those loving thoughts don’t they come from the same place?

This contemplation has great power: “To give, you must first have.” I invite you to watch yourself and notice what you give and where it source is located. I invite you to consider taking ownership of your mood, your state of mind. Consider letting go of blaming the world for what is really going on inside of you. Consider that you have the power to change what you give it.

Peace to you.

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Here we are Being Spiritual.

I am going to talk about two things: context and something called re-contextualizing. Don’t let the words put you off. The intention is simply to offer a way of living life from a far broader framework, or perspective, than our particular beliefs usually give us.

The context of a situation refers to the part of an event that, when added or left out, changes its fuller meaning and thus our understanding of it. The many experiences of a thing, brought together, in other words, its context, will determine its particular meaning for you. Let me give you an example. Think of a palm tree. Your experiences of the palm tree will pop into your mind. Put that palm tree in a Shopping Center in Greenland and doing so will likely change your initial idea of it, unless you live in Greenland.

Put it in an oasis in the Sahara. Again, this shifts the context. Maybe an oasis is the only place you have known palms to be, and so the context fits for you. Your personal palm tree experience may stand out as a shape, set in flashing neon lights. A shape you saw when visiting your favorite restaurant. When you make that palm two inches high and of green plastic, when you anchor it in a terrarium with an iguana, you have shifted its context yet again. Each shift will give you a completely different view and understanding of a palm tree – expanding the context.. It is more inclusive and broad.

Yet, when I asked you to think of a palm tree, I was remembering a poem about the palm of a hand, particularly poignant description of a lover waving farewell. My poem further re-contextualizes the palm tree image.

Context is all about how you view a thing. Our personal beliefs keep us locked into certain contexts. It can be extremely helpful to learn to re-contextualize from a spiritual perspective, particularly when engaging in forgiveness.

What does re-contextualizing mean? It means viewing an event, a person or a belief in a broader, more inclusive way. It can also mean a completely different way; by adding further dimensions to the information, the beliefs, and the ideas you already have. Doing so can change and free your point of view.

When you hold a belief about someone or some event, you hold it in a particular context. “My mother never loved me,” for example, is a perspective that freezes her in many “non-loving” situations through the memories you carry. It holds her frozen in those particular events, those you have experienced, those many times you knew her as unloving. In your mind, she is like that artificial palm tree in the terrarium. She has the label “mother,” but not its “true” expression. The context for you is really that mother’s should love in certain and particular ways – ways that yours did not. You believe that mother should mean loving. That is the context you carry with all your experiences of mother. How you keep such beliefs alive and stable is to keep the particular focus of the belief. You can not accept those that do not fit within it.

Now to re-contextualize a situation, a person, an event, you remove your judgments, (green plastic isn’t a palm tree and unloving isn’t mothering), your stances (only trees are palms; she should be different than she is), or your position about it (I thought palms only lived in an oasis; I thought mothers should show love in certain ways).

Re-contextualizing how you view a person is meant to take you out of the rigidity, and the pain of your small dense view, and into the massive and lighter fields of energy. It can take you into acceptance, into peace, and into joy that a compassionate, loving view offers.

I will stick with the example of the unloving mother. Re-contextualizing the relationship between you and your mother offers you another perspective. It will move you out of focusing only on certain individual events and into focusing on the whole relationship. The unloving events, such as she did not attend your graduation, did not hug you when you needed her, always ordered you around, and so forth, are all the small, fixed, “did not love me the way I wanted to be loved situations” that you carry as wounds about her. From that context, you cannot escape feeling resentful, left out, ripped-off. Something is wrong that a mother treats you this way.

Re-contextualize the relationship from the “bad mother” view, to the whole mother view. Now recall all she did do in mothering you. She raised you (she could have dropped you off at the nearest Children’s Aid). She chose to keep you, a mothering thing to do. She worked full time to do so. So she had a full time job and a child(ren) to raise. Hmm, perhaps she was tired during much of her evening, like you are after work. She fed you. She clothed you. She cleaned you and for you. She protected you. She sent you to school. She took care of you when you were sick.

As you broaden your outlook, the memories of kindnesses she offered you – her definition of kindnesses, rather than yours – begin to surface. The “loving mother” you have always had, begins to become obvious. You have moved her out of your fixed context – your “how a mother should mother” context, and put her into what she understands to be her role. It shifts you profoundly when do this with deep sincerity.

Another way to re-contextualize this situation is to pretend to be her, day after day. Pretend to live her life. The “walk a mile in her shoes” context. The willingness to look past your own expectations of her, while imagining living as she did, is life changing.

Another and perhaps the most spiritual re-contextualization, is in realizing that you already have all the love you thought others should give you. Spiritual practice shows you this is true and has always been true.

Putting any life event in a spiritual context is a practice that relieves pain. Each person and situation in your life begins to be an opportunity. You begin to experience the event as an opportunity to remove the blocks to Love. Re-contextualizing is a most powerful tool. And although it seems new, the experience of having something placed in a different context is one we all know. It occurs automatically when we have forgiven our self or let go of our judgments of another.

Decide to see differently. Deciding to re-contextualize, to see differently, is enough to pull back your usual contextual view from the situation-by-situation one, to the whole relationship. You offer yourself as full a spectrum as is possible for you. It will teach you how holding situations in your usual particular ways, fixes you to a microscopic viewpoint. Re-contextualizing gives you the telescopic view.

It always is your decision. How do you want to experience life, through a microscope or a Hubble telescope?

Peace to you.

Forgiveness

What does forgiveness mean? It is letting go of grudges or hurts and guilt’s from the past. It is realizing that every thing, every event in life can be seen to be for your good.

What will letting go of the past give you? Release from guilt, freedom from its hurt – peace and compassion for the errors we all make. I have pieces of memory in me that say, “I’m guilty” and I see that it is time to release it and let it go.

Everything is presented before you to teach you to grow – to teach you to let go. What is buried in your past that carries guilt, regret, upset of some sort? Consider what it is doing to you. Consider that it shuts away your full capacity to love and be at peace.

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Personal Freedom through Forgiveness

We begin today by pumping up our energy and affirming: “Yes,yes,yes,” in order to find the strength to begin to face the idea of forgiving our past.

Forgiveness offers us the key to release the burdens of sadness, guilt, anger, and victim hood. These emotions are stored up inside of us when we hold negativity toward our self and/or others.

We can carry great negativity about past actions and situations. These are held in our psyche, our unconscious, and our conscious minds. It does not occur to us that releasing the past, letting it go, will enhance the quality of our life. It will release us from our self-made, inner jails.

I recommend using A Course In Miracles, a year long course focusing on forgiveness. I also recommend my book: At Your Heart’s Pace which is brimming with helpful exercises and tools that assist you in your working with forgiveness issues.

A helpful first step toward taking action about forgiving, is to ponder the importance of letting the past go. Contemplating this will bring you the particular issues you need to address in order to free your self from the past.

Much of my work with others as a mentor involves forgiveness issues. As spiritual students, we cannot carry a burden of guilt or sadness and expect to experience peace and joy.

When you find it difficult to let go of the past, consider doing some mentoring work with me. Go to my Spiritual Mentoring page.

Peace to you.

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What We Call a Path is Spiritual Evolution

There is no path. Yet as we progress, as we evolve, as we go along, those are the words used to describe what we are doing.

In our mind, it seems like we are following a path, a linear kind of thing, as step-by-step, a foot before a foot kind of situation. Yet it isn’t a path we are on, it is an experience of application. The spiritual path is about application.

Think about how a plant grows. You take the seed. You apply certain conditions – the right soil mixture, the right water mixture, the right temperature for it and that seed starts to soften and open and split and grow. It grows because it takes from the environment and becomes completely different expression of itself. Such growth is a magical occurrence that happens all the time around us. That kind of evolution is exactly what our spiritual path is like.

It is about applying, how do you apply? How do you do these spiritual things? What do you do?
There is lots of information. It can be very confusing sorting through it. What I do as a mentor is to help you discover what you want and where you want to go.

Consider what you want on your spiritual “path.” If you require assistance, I am here.

Peace to you.

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It seems odd that you live with a constant stream of thoughts flowing through your head, yet rarely notice what they are saying and whether or not you believe them. Millions upon millions of thoughts flow through your mind. It is a shock to realize you give the thought-stream absolute authority over your whole life experience.

Mental Virus

When you do not examine your mind, it is as if you have a mental virus which fills you with a barrage of words and symbols and meanings that trigger emotions, which in turn flood through your body.

It may seem to be an exaggeration to say that thoughts are a potentially lethal disease, that believing them or not examining them, is hazardous to your health. A bit of observation will clearly reveal this as true.

Whether you notice what you are thinking, or just react to all the thoughts flowing from your mind, the medicine necessary to relieve the stress and suffering arising from your thoughts, begins with a willingness to take a step back, a willingness to observe them.

Try to stop them

Have you ever tried to stop your thoughts? Try now. Bear with me. Take a moment, close your eyes and tell your mind to stop thinking. Demand it obey you. How did you do? No way does it stop. You  do not control thought. Thinking is apparently an aspect of consciousness. As soon as you wake, thinking begins. Did you decide to think when you woke this morning? Hmm.

Notice That You Believe What You Think

When you first begin to watch your thoughts, it becomes more and more obvious that you are not what you think. It becomes clear that you certainly have thoughts, but they are not what you are. You are that which is watching them!

Observing the streaming mind gives you a chance to notice what is moving through your consciousness, rather than what you usually do, which is to believe and to react to them.

Such observation allows you enough of a pause to recognize that your thoughts are common and almost never unique. No matter the age, race, economic condition, your ”I want….I need…I can’t…I should…I am…I have…,” reflect a universal litany.

Notice that you believe utterly in the thoughts you think. You believe they are uniquely yours. So certain are you that to stand back from thoughts, to examine them, never occurs to you. I would like to offer you the opportunity to realize how hypnotized you are to the belief in what you think. Then to realize that you can release a judgment, a memory, and a fear. When you do, freedom awaits. Often the babble you are listening to is absurd, exaggerated, or simply made up from supposition, from guessing how another is feeling.

Is there a cure?

Is there a cure? Yes! Observe your thoughts, all your thoughts; the good bad and the indifferent thoughts. Notice any and all that flow through the mind. Watching them is simply a matter of willingness and habit. Doing so changes the quality of your consciousness. Gradually it will dawn on you to ask, “Who or what is it that is observing the thoughts?”

The second part of the cure, the next thing to do, to is to extract yourself from being at the mercy of what you are watching. Examine and compare what you think you should and must experience, with what actually is and does happen. What is true? Do you really know all your assumptions to be true? Can you know what another is feeling and thinking? Under such calm observation, your attachment to your life events, even your history, changes dramatically.

Do thoughts have the power to keep you in fear, in anticipation, in dread? Do thoughts have such power or have you given them that power?  I invite you to watch them in order to reveal whether they do or do not. My telling you this will is not be the same as you having a personal experience. So I invite you to take your medicine. Take the prescription. Stand back from and observe your thoughts. It is the cure for all that ails you.

Clarity automatically unravels confusion

You will begin to feel better right away. You will become more and more self-honest. You will begin to be more and more comfortable with “what is” instead of being caught in the “what should.” You will begin to love “what is” for it sets you free.

Freeing yourself from your thoughts brings up a half forgotten feeling of a bubbling inner excitement. A joy begins to rise up within you. Such joy has nothing to do with any outer event. Truth brings freedom. Freedom from all your tragic “tales” about how your life was, is, should be – as well as how the events were and are right now.

Discover clarity

When you observe your thoughts and question their reality, the power you give them gradually, but consistently dissolves – as shadows do when illuminated by light.

What is left when you disengage from the thought stream you once allows to enslaved you? Try it and discover clarity for yourself.

Peace to you.

Spiritual Mentoring: The “I-Know” Mind

The “I-know” mind is a huge topic.

If you think you know all there is to know about a person or topic, then the mind is closed. That is all you will look for. You are shut off from receiving intuitive information.

You will not receive any more understanding about the world, about others, about your self because you have decided you know. You have decided they or it is a certain way and that is the way it is for you.

Consider noticing your “I-know” mind. Consider noticing the lens you place in front of what is happening in this moment by standing back from assumptions. Just be. Just look. Just experience. So much more will be revealed to you when you do.

This is another wee post on a mentoring topic. If you need assistance with seeing the lenses you place in front of your mind about your self or others or things of the world, that is the role I serve as a mentor.

Peace to you.

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“A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble on the road.”
- Henry Ward

We are told  as spiritual people “on the path” that a sense of humor is more than helpful, it is necessary. Sometimes it seems that these helpful hints ensure further frustration and guilt. If we are not feeling full of joy, it can be quite difficult to shrug life off and find its humor. Life is not funny when we are hurting. When we address the hurt first, when we address those negative emotions, often the situation’s humor becomes obvious.

One way to deal with upset feelings is to dive into them. Blow them out of proportion. Exaggerate and gesticulate. Play them out like an opera. This exercise can help you to let them go.

Exercise: Not taking the personality seriously – we know not what we do.

If you are particularly stuck in a feeling, tell yourself you are going to exaggerate it. While doing so, it is most important that you have your inner witness turned on. That is the part of you that watches and observes. It is vitally important that you decide you will be blowing the event out of proportion. Acknowledging the exaggeration as your decision, allows you to keep the witnessing part of you clear about your intention.

Watch the feelings. Observe and notice what you are feeling. Seriously, you do not want to increase despair or helplessness. You do not want to throw yourself off a building. You do want to exaggerate the feeling, while you observe it. This shows you that you are (and always were) in control of it, though perhaps unaware you were.

It becomes obvious that you chose to resist and therefore, hold on to the negativity, and because you did not know you were doing this, you experienced being very stuck in it.

Next, ask yourself how much pain you are experiencing. On a scale of 0 (no pain) to 10 (the most pain you can imagine) choose the intensity of your feeling. Whatever it is, for example a 5 or 6, try to blow it up, perhaps to an 8 or 10. Attempt to increase the feeling to the fullest.

At the same time, realize that you are the one making it feel bigger. You choose to make the feeling feel larger. This helps you access all the suppressed emotional energy.

 When you watch the emotion, you step outside the feeling and are no longer holding on to it, no longer resisting it. So merely tell yourself that you want to feel more of this feeling, more of this pain, more of this sadness. Tell yourself you want to wallow in the emotion. Tell yourself that you want to whine and howl and moan. Really get into it. All the while, stand away from the emotion and keep the watcher present in your awareness.

No longer will you dabble in your upset for days, months, or years, instead this magnifies the whole event and allows it to drain away, at once. This practice moves you from being victimized by your feeling to welcoming it. It is an empowering stance. It becomes immediately obvious that you are the one in control.

As you blow it up, you notice you no longer have anything to hold on to. The energy of the emotion comes to a climax – yep just like that climax – and because you choose to allow it freedom from suppression, it unravels and is released.

So, when you want to wallow, be honest and allow yourself to go for it!! Big time! Be the best wallower in the Universe. At the same time, be aware that you are making a choice to do so.

Shame, guilt, grief, fear, desire, anger, are low energy feelings which block the love you are. Such emotions are the result of being human. Such feelings are without LOVE.  By using this technique, the self pity will melt away and you will end up in laughter, in joy, and in more compassion.

Now lift your head and look around at the rest of humanity wallowing in its negativity! This exercise helps you to open your heart in true compassion for the human race, who knows not what they do!

The final part of this exercise, asks you to discover what you truly want. Do you really want the feeling you just released or do you want peace? Do I want to be right and justified, or do you want to be peaceful and happy?  It can be freeing to ask such questions. Ask kindly, from your heart, and accept the answers that arise.

When you held on to the negative emotions, the answers may be that, yes, you did want to be right; you did want to feel awful; you did want to hurt. Yet, without the negativity bottled up inside of you, your answers will be different. Freed from such emotion, what you truly want rises up. It is often accompanied with a head shake, a giggle or at least a smile.

Peace to you.

“Feelings only lie; they tell us we are going to get from releasing them, what we get from holding on to them.”
- Sedona Method

Spiritual Evolution – We are all Going Home

I have been asked to talk about what I do with spiritual mentoring. It seems that I have not put enough information on my website, so I have been urged to describe what it is that I do. Therefore, this is the first of an informal series related to spiritual mentoring.

Over time I have collected a large number of useful tools to assist with living spiritually. They include such things as tapping and releasing, surrendering, a way of affirmation, meditation, contemplation, A Course in Miracles (ACIM), forgiveness work, techniques for bringing your practice into your daily life, instead of just a few stolen moments, all of which assist at different times, or for different people, in pursuing spiritual evolution.

My book, At Your Heart’s Pace, includes many of these tools, as well as over 30 spiritual practices. It also includes a series of exercises dealing specifically with the various kinds of resistance and negative core beliefs. It can be difficult to even recognize these hidden obstacles, much less know how to deal with them.

Spiritual evolution, the primary topic of this video, occurs at its own pace. It is said that in order to understand wisdom, one must already be wise. It is that acquisition of wisdom, of spiritual coherence, direction, and clarity that is the goal, and which for which a spiritual mentor is useful. It is my joy to offer this.

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I am a long-time student in A Course In Miracles (ACIM). In the early years of study, I drove with the Course at the center of my chest, locked it in place with a seat belt. I thought the book radiated Love. I slept every night with it under my pillow. I heard that was how Edgar Cayce learned from books. I took it on holiday, I did not want to miss one practice session. It came with me on every canoe and camping trip. I felt incomplete without it near. I read it on still lakes, on public transit, while waiting for clients. I lugged it everywhere in my purse. I bought timing gadgets to remind me when to do it. I always wrote the daily lesson reminders on the palm or back of my hand.

I had the lingo, I knew the lessons. I talked endlessly about it with Course students. In my ACIM groups I would dissect the lessons or the text and tell you what they meant. I would go around quoting its pithy lines. Yup. I knew the Course. I got it. I would happily, gently , correct you when you didn’t.

During those years I had many beatific experiences. I was led and guided. Occasionally I was bathed in Light. Yet on a day-to-day basis, I often experienced some form of guilt, or turmoil, and/or frustration about my practice. I wasn’t in peace.

After a few years of study, my family (totally alarmed by my obsession), tried to “help” me by saying such things as, “Are you still reading that same book?” “How long is that course?” I felt defensive because I secretly wondered if they were right. Why was it taking me so long? Maybe I was not doing the lessons thoroughly, or with complete sincerity. Maybe my progress was stunted because of the days when I would simply forget what I committed to do.

“You are resistant,” said my spiritual ego, and I believed it.

It never occurred to me to weed out those nagging thoughts and offer them to the Inner Guide. I was caught in the “I-know” mind. I was so bedazzled by a time-line, that I stood over myself, willing myself to grow. In doing so, I blocked my own Light.

Eventually, despite my interference, I evolved enough to hear a different Voice. I had closed my inner eyes; decided how long it should take and had shut out the Light. Thankfully “I” could not control its eternal Shine. “I” did not have the capacity to stop the Light coming through my inner lids.

Did the Holy Spirit chide me about timing or measure my progress? Never. All during this time of practice with the Course the only thing I was offered was inner guidance and reassurance. I was not yet ready to wholeheartedly listen.

I now take my doubts into the Silence for help, for correction. I now see how innocent was my belief in the voice that told me I was too slow. I understand better that I was learning to see everything I once believed differently. I needed the time it took to evolve.

It simply takes as long as it takes.

I continue to evolve and so must you. Whatever your practice, however long you have been at it, stand back from the voices that chide, that fear, that guilt.

Take another look. Contemplate your intention. What it is you seek? If it does not seem to be happening, bring your fears, your doubts, your concerns to Inner Wisdom. Let the answers unfold and arrive in bursts of clarity.

As strange as this answer may sound, our spiritual growth takes as long as it takes. So pull in a full, deep breath, and continue to apply those daily lessons, whatever yours are. You will discover that it is the application that grows you.

Peace to you.

*Note: I teach the daily lesson and text reading from The Course in Miracles (ACIM) every Thursday morning at 10:30 EST at ACIMgather on Paltalk. You are welcome to join us.