There are two main ideas that go into this post

1. Fear is a powerful motivator of action and tends to create the patterning of habitual reactions that can play a large role in the creation of our individual realities – especially if they go unnoticed
2. There are as many versions of Truth as there are ways of looking at things: Truth is fluid. Becoming conscious as to which Truth you actually want to nurture in your heart is a key to living happily and on purpose
   

The best way for me to explain this is to give an example from my own life, which just took place! Life is an amazing teacher, especially if you choose to be aware of the opportunities it gives you to become more and more on purpose, joyful, and free of ‘old stuff’. When you choose to be aware of those, you begin to notice that knot of anxiety when it happens, and then wonder why it happened. It’s a truth, it is happening, you do feel anxiety… but the big question is: Do you have to?

Something says you do, that there’s a real danger here. Autonomic patterns created by the mind and body the last time you had this kind of experience will lead you down a path to create a safer situation. Again, it’s a truth. As true as you allow it to remain. Allowed to run the show, the autonomic mind and body reactions will affirm the truth of the fear, and you’ll begin take unconscious action accordingly. In doing so, you actually begin to create the situation you believe is True. You do so by nurturing it in your heart with your own energy, focus and choices. But who is in the driver’s seat? Do you want to live the truth that fear dictates is ‘real’?

Here’s what happened to teach me these things I’ll even give a little backstory afterward for context. Oh, and by the way, I’m a firm believer that life will reflect back to you the truths you hold in your heart. Life itself will give you a roadmap out of old truths and patterns that no longer work and restrict your freedom – truths you hold close that unintentionally keep you creating things you don’t want to create.

The Now Story: My husband and I play in an online game. We each play to our own strengths and the things we enjoy. There’s a mild sense of competition between us, but it’s more of a relaxed playful reason to push ourselves than anything else. We play separately sometimes, and other times we work together as a team toward a common goal. We have a lot of fun together, and it’s taught us a great deal about communication, working to compensate each other in the weaker areas and hold up each other’s strengths and draw on them. When all is in balance, we each feel useful and powerful in our own way as an individual, and powerful as a team.

No system is static, and there’s never a perfect forever maintained balance. As each of us grows and learns and gains in skill, the balance tips, back and forth, back and forth, one of us being more powerful than the other for a bit, and then shifting the other way. The balance is pretty easy to maintain, all things considered, and stays for the most part in a comfortable middle ground where we’re both happy and feeling powerful and accomplished. Every once in a while, though…

Last night I learned some things in the online game that pushed me ahead in the power arena. It was a big accomplishment and I was excited about it because previously I’d been lagging behind and not doing so well and feeling unhappy about it. It’s not as much fun to play when you lose all the time, and I had ventured into new and uncharted territory in the game and hadn’t found my stride yet. Well, last night I found it, and in a Big way. My husband knew I had planned to work on it, and this morning he asked me how it was going.

I began sharing about how great it was, how powerful it felt to play so well. As I shared my accomplishments in some areas that actually outstripped my husband’s most recent victories, I began to feel a great deal of anxiety, and an odd sense of stubbornness. A push pull feeling. It was uncomfortable and I left the situation feeling a bit roughed up, without my husband having had any idea of my inner turmoil.

I was sure that he was jealous and that I had gone too far in my sharing of how good it felt and of how powerful I had become. I decided to downplay things in the future to compensate and make him feel better, to be sure to point out his achievements, and to stop enjoying experiencing ways of excelling, so that he could excel for a while without any competition. The idea made me feel sad, but it felt like it was the only choice. I had a roiling kind of anxiousness in my stomach as I began to chide myself for being so prideful.

And then I woke up to the pattern. My feelings had hit a red-line, a place I don’t tend to go – so far down that I chide myself into submission for my own good. And I began to explore how I felt, and why I might feel that way. I replayed the conversation in my head and realized that there wasn’t really anything in it that would lead one to believe that my husband was jealous, unless they were really looking for it and read a lot into the conversation.

I went and asked my husband, and as I had thought, there wasn’t any jealousy there. There was a tad of the ‘now I have an impetus to excel, too’ sort of a feeling, but nothing of the huge jealous competition sense that I had believed I was triggering. If I had gone forward with my unconscious changing of my behavior to suit a truth that existed only for me because of my fear…I would have been resentful, and eventually created the reality that I feared existed through a chain of events.

My compensating change in behavior and the resentment created in me by it would have led to my experiencing the repercussion I was afraid of and had unconsciously patterned to avoid. Here’s the backstory that created the pattern in the first place.

The Then Story: When I was a little kid, my mom told me that my main job was to keep my dad happy. My dad was a childish man, and very competitive. He viewed me as an equal when it came to competing for my mother’s attention – it was, in a lot of ways, more like living with a jealous brother than a father. At the time, though, I didn’t know the difference. Best I knew, this is how reality worked. I laid low, downplayed any accomplishments, and heaven forbid if he got the impression I felt powerful because it would lead to a swift and painful backlash from him that usually far outweighed any threat I may have posed. Undermining that power became important to him, and he did so by showing me how powerless I was, in various childish ways.

When I had been labeled as ‘not living up to my potential’ and ‘holding back’ in school, my mom had been more angry than I had ever seen her. I was to excel. I was to be powerful. She refused to accept any less. And I was to do so and keep my father happy. Her love and a desire to not disappoint her fostered in me a great sense of joy whenever I excelled, one that went in direct contradiction to what I needed to do to keep my father happy. So I learned to feel that joy in private, and to hide any sense of power.

I learned to be selectively powerful, and never, if at all possible, around my dad. A vast network of patterned behavior developed, and as early childhood patterns often do, it extended itself to include anyone with power in my life.

As you can imagine, a lot of the unconscious patterning that I have been releasing for a while now was created by the above environment – and this most recent one is no exception. Small, safe, powerful triggerings of those patterns by my life have, over time, allowed me to dismantle them, one by one. The biggest key I’ve found to letting the things go is becoming and then remaining conscious of each one as they’re discovered.

Without fail for me, each time I become conscious to a pattern, it comes up again a few days or weeks later. It’s triggered, again, this time with a dual perception going on for me. The part of me that would have always reacted in a certain way in the past is there, and there’s another part of me which is going, “Wait a second! I’m awake to this now…I see what’s going on…!”

Sometimes the patterning is so powerful I don’t even notice and I just run down the reaction route again a few times for good measure. It always comes up again, though, so I’ve learned not to be too hard on myself when I realize what’s happened. I just examine the situation to see what was so seductive about it that I couldn’t break free of the old pattern, and decide on new beliefs I would rather have – new truths I would rather hold.

And eventually, I come to wonder what the big deal was. Just a boogeyman in the closet that had such power! But it was just an illusion… Just a paper dragon. Just the fear of an old situation that’s no longer present, throwing its weight around in the Now as if it were real. Becoming aware of the illusion and consciously choosing to act differently reveals it to be nothing more than a shadow, with no more power than what I gave it by holding it true in my own heart.

It is powerful to wake up to the understanding that you’re the one holding the keys, and that you’re the one in the driver’s seat who makes the final call as to where you’re going. The GPS system of your mind does its best to keep you safe and get you were it believes you want to go. In the end – you’re the one driving.

Yes, I want that vs. No, I don’t want that – both make a choice, both are expressions of inner thought. Ponder it for a moment… How does it feel when you say to yourself, “Yes. I want that. That is what I want.” And then try on for size the feel of saying to yourself, “No. I do not want that.”

Vanilla or chocolate? Do you tend to point at the chocolate and say, “Chocolate’s for me!” Or do you tend to point at vanilla and say, “Nope, don’t like vanilla.” Or…perhaps your thoughts and voice go along the lines of, “Oohh, chocolate, I want that! I don’t like vanilla.”

We make choices every day, voicing and experiencing our preferences. The ability to choose is one of our most precious gifts. And one of our greatest experiences of that gift is our freedom to choose how we focus in on those preferences.

Our natural, life force tendency is to align with that which we want. Life is an inclusionary energy. It wants to know and experience the next great thing we desire. To focus on what we don’t want, on what we want to exclude, is to clench down on that life force. We actually end up spending some time experiencing that which we don’t want by choosing to think about how icky it would be! It may only be in our minds, but it is still an experience that effects our bodies and our moods.

Our mind’s tendency is to pattern match in order to insure safety. The mind suspends inclusion until it can confirm safety – and it pulls from all kinds of things to do so. What happened last time you chose X. What are your parent’s and other’s opinions about X, and about Y? And maybe even Z! Maybe none of them is right to want! Your mind tries to zero in on the perfect match that includes your desire, plus what you Should do according to (insert parents, peers, religion, society, anything you feel is important enough to consider while making this particular choice, here).

“I will not include that, I will not receive that, until I know it is safe/good/right,” says the mind. “What you actually want is only part of the equation. I’m here to keep you/me safe despite all those things you want and probably shouldn’t want, and if you know what’s good for you (oh irony) you’ll let me do my job and analyze all of the possibilities first.”

We are not, however, at the whim of our minds. Our mind is a tool, one for us to use to create new and interesting experiences for ourselves. The mind’s pattern matching process is based on fear of the unknown. Its intention is to analyze all that has gone before, so that it can accurately predict what will happen if a particular choice is made. In other words, it loves to spend time in Ugh-ville, because its current programming runs on the idea that it’s doing a good job keeping you safe by doing so. It must save you from yourself, and it gets so tired doing so!

Our minds have become so busy with pattern matching that we more often than not don’t use them for what they were really made for in this day and age – creating the life of our dreams via inclusionary choosing in our day to day thought-chatter. Instead we tend to run ourselves ragged (literally), making sure we don’t accidentally want what we shouldn’t want.

We’ve come to a point in our evolution that we can begin to trust our desires. Little by little, by focusing on what we want, we will learn to trust our natural inclusionary tendencies. The mind will be there to make sure we don’t walk in front of a bus on our way to our desire – it won’t go away while we’re not looking.

It will take time to build a new habit. To free ourselves to want, free from the exclusionary ‘but what if?’ experiences of the fear-based mind. The mind will slowly be re-programmed to function in an inclusionary fashion, shifting the fear based ‘but what if?’ experience into a passion building inclusion based ‘but what if?!’

We can do it. We are doing it! It feels good to do it. Just think…”What if!?”

What do you want? A good hint, believe it or not, is what thrills yet scares you.

Hee Ever the balancing act, eh?

Awakening with Dawn felt unbalanced – too me, not enough playing with others. Not enough co-creation going on. So, what I thought happened was that Awakening with Dawn metamorphed into Angels of Awakening… However, I’m realizing now that I was wrong. Instead, what occurred was the birth of a new creation, sprung forth from the desire to be of service and help people wake up to more what they’re really capable of.

I didn’t realize this until a few days after Angels of Awakening went live. Until after Awakening with Dawn was shelved and started collecting dust. I felt like something was being neglected, something in me… and I realized – there’s no room for me to hold meditations and do readings or play with consciousness raising fun stuff when the show is dedicated to the guest!

Yes, I’ll be hosting the show, and I’ll get to talk and share my thoughts but… where am I going to fit in what I want to say and just what I want to do?

I was grumping at my husband about this, about how in creating one amazing incredible creation that I cherish, I kind of lost a part of myself. And it was he that suggested – why not two shows? I argued at first, saying it would take too much time. I’m about Angels of Awakening now, and dedicated to that. How can I dedicate so much time and energy to two creations?

And then I realized – he was right. Awakening of Dawn already has been created. It is created, in my mind. And just because I’ve created a site and show dedicated to others, doesn’t mean I have to abandon the one dedicated to myself being who I am.

It may sound silly, but honestly, I get so much enjoyment out of guiding meditations, doing readings, talking about new angles on ideas and whatever, that I had at some unconscious level that I was being selfish/egocentric just focusing on myself. It didn’t matter that I was focusing on the sharing of what I am/who I am with others so that they may enjoy and gain from me being that – that sounded egocentric to me, no matter how much people may be getting out of it.

Backwards thinking, eh? It is, at least, when you actually look at it straight on and see it for what it is.

Not to sound egocentric (:P) but, the sun doesn’t get embarrassed and stop shining because it realizes it’s been way too self-centered lately… It is what it is and it does what it does because that is who and what it is at its core. Its essence.

My essence wants to shine, too. Not just in the celebration of others, which I truly do love, but also in the celebration of myself.

And so, Awakening with Dawn is back on the creation drawing board. I’m no longer so embarrassed and afraid of coming across as egocentric – that’s always been one of my greatest fears – that I’m not willing to even begin the creation of a space created just for myself to shine. I’ll begin, and I’ll just see what happens. I won’t say I’m not still nervous, don’t get me wrong. But…

I’ll begin. I’ll begin it now.

In order to flow with the creation as it unfolds, Awakening with Dawn has gone through a transformation. It has a new name – a larger more all-encompassing name. Awakening with Dawn has now metamorphed into Angels of Awakening.

The root of Angel is Messenger. Definitions vary, but they all tend to settle upon one key concept: Angels are messengers of love and possibility. They come in times of need, to guide people to their own highest potential. They help people to see themselves in a clear and loving light, and to become more of that which they already are.

There are many angels walking the earth, right now. Stars spread across a sleeping world like diamonds, singing with their very being, “There’s more! Wake up!”

Stars, though…they have a tendency to form constellations… Constellations are powerful vessels for concept and idea. Consider constellations such as Aries, or Scorpio – groupings of stars that are the vessels for concepts and ideas that impact humanity on a group mind level.

I believe that in the purposeful recognition of these voices there is a synergy that can take place. A gathering. The forming of a constellation through a unification of purpose that can bring about a quickening that will lift humanity to a new level of Becoming. And that is the concept that propelled this newly named creation forward into its most recent transformation.

The concept for Awakening with Dawn came about in order to give me the ability to sing with my very being to a much wider audience, through the avenue of the written and spoken word. And this was good. But it can be better. There are a lot of us out there, and we all have amazingly vital and beautiful songs to sing.

Angels of Awakening is coming about in order to give us all a space in which to sing with our very being to a much wider audience. As writers, show hosts, audio and video podcasters, website link sharing – who knows?! The site will still begin with a small, basic easy to sustain and maintain core of a single blog with multiple writers, and a single radio show with guests, and then grow from there.

The home for this creation is www.angelsofawakening.net. The target date for going live is tomorrow, 01/07/08

Second life! A free, virtual reality 3D fully voice capable environment built by the people who live there. For more on Second Life or to download the free software, visit http://www.secondlife.com

The below events are taking place in SL in the space I hold there called the Temple of Awakening SL is on Pacific time. Descriptions of the events follow the schedule.

Once you are logged in to Second Life, you can jump to the event location by clicking the link below:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gaenari/47/143

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Thursday, 27th December
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7pm SL Time
Discussion – Awakening Angels

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Friday, 28th December
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12pm SL Time
Live Guided Meditation – Awakening Activation

2pm SL Time
Readings/Healings – Duality Transmutation

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Saturday, 29th December
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9pm SL Time
Discussion – Awakening Angels

Awakening Angels
This will be a discussion centered around the subject of awakening – to more awareness, potential, and for the joy and love of life itself.
Useful techniques and info, personal stories from the presenters, and audience interaction and activation to be enjoyed.
This presentation will be given as a mix of Voice and Text Chat.

Awakening Activation
Live Voice Guided Meditation by Velvet Tone. Here’s a quote taken from a converstaion where I was describing what it is I do:
“I swirl through everyone present and gather energy info into a ball and then go into the middle of the ball, trailing a line of light. And then I flow through all that is needed to activate that which is ready to be awakened, and that which is ready to be gently released out, in everyone present – using my voice.”
Sound good? See you there!

Duality Transmutation
Readings and Energy Healings offered freely and designed to activate the embrace of fully present well-being in triality consciousness.

Personal Transformation and the Claiming of our Creative Spark

We live in a world continually transforming beneath our very feet and above our very heads. It is up to us to make a choice: Move with it, or Fight it – ’cause either way, it’s goin’. Where, though? And what part do we play, as individuals at this tea party?

We are the creators. We make the rules, the goals, the scenery. We draw in our fellow players, and paint elaborate tapestries with our awareness, choice of focus, and our feelings.

You are awareness. The world is the canvas. Focus is your brush. Thoughts are your forms and emotion are your colors. That is how powerful you are – how each of us is. Can you feel the immensity in that? The joy? Can you sense all of creation watching you with baited breath as you read these words, eagerly waiting to see what you come up with next?

‘Paint your world in shades that will uplift you.’ (Anael)

And it’s all good! You can’t mis-create. You are the most important person in your world because you are its creator – and you’re creating right along side other equally immensely powerful artists, also creating their own worlds! A single thought and an array of possibilities spring forth, paths just awaiting the touch of your choice, the feel of your focus gently washing color into that world – your world, the one you chose and continue to choose each time you make a decision and focus your awareness – a world unlike any other, cherished by all of creation as your creation, no matter what it may look like.

And so, we can paint on autopilot. We can close our eyes to the colors we choose to paint with, allowing the bumps of other’s worlds to guide our hand. We can even allow our power as a creator to be drawn upon, for a while – though never completely – allowing others to sweep us up in their creations, willingly suspending our abilities for the sake of the ride. Many of us have done this, me included. Humanity has done this en mass for hundreds of years.

There’s a really neat thing happening, though! The painters, the builders of worlds, are awakening. We are awakening. All of us. We have asked with our thoughts – more? Is there more? What else is there? I thought I knew what I wanted – they told me what I wanted, and I worked my entire life to get it, creating on their behalf, and now I have it! and… well… Now what?

There’s no lack of people out there telling you what you want. The economy of more than one country has been shaped by fulfilling desires that they’ve created. Religion; the education system; definitely the media. As a group, we’ve figured out who you’re supposed to be, what you’re supposed to be doing, what you’re supposed to look like – and when you have these things and are living this life, You Have Arrived and you are thus happily ever after.

And we have been striving for that for a while now. The thing is, we arrived a long time ago, and when we got there, the creation was hollow. Yes, we created it, but according to someone else’s design. We thought it was ours because we chose which track we were going to take, which carefully defined, safe and guaranteed path we were going to walk…but in doing so we only created within the boundaries of that track. Now we’re waking up, a bit dis-illusioned as we realize that those who laid the path aren’t happy either.

‘You can’t get it wrong (or ‘right’) because you never get it done.’ (Abraham-Hicks)

What’s going on here? Do we even want to walk this path? What else is there, and if they’re not happy over at the happily ever after, are we doomed to wander a dark forest forever, or what…? What now?

This can be a very scary place to wake up in the middle of! And we’re all doing it! We crack an eye open there and squeeze it shut again with a big, ‘Oh crap, nooooo’ sensation of sinking in our guts.’ No. I refuse to accept that there’s more because this is the Safe and this is the Known. I can’t just up and leave my job and start walking!’

And yet…enough of us have been having that sensation now that this idea is becoming a norm. The dis-illusionment, the fear of madness, the clinging to the known and therefore believed safe. This creation, these paths, are running out of the creative juice, the creative spark, that gave them rise – because people are starting to not believe in them. It’s kind of like being in a painting that one moment was clear and the next, all the colors begin to run and lines become blurry and you have no idea where you are, how you got there, or where you can go from here – or even if there is a ‘where’ to go to!

I am here to say to you, officially on the record and for the joy of it: There is a where. And there is a what. And it is more glorious than any of us can conceive of at this time because it will take all of us to create it. Now the real fun begins.

You’ve heard the whispers, the first eddys in an old current: The Secret. Thought Creates. Follow Your Bliss. The scary part of this is that there is no formula other than your own, and the joy you can feel. Training wheels off, no guidelines or pointers from an old world reality that wants you to go down a particular known track, many of us are left spinning our wheels.

‘In the end, everything is going to be okay. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end yet.’ (unknown)

It takes a LOT of guts to trailblaze, to leave the known and forge your own path, especially when you’re the only trailblazer. The wonderful thing is, the time for trailblazers has finally arrived. The balance has tipped, and there are now enough trailblazers out there that it is becoming ‘popular’ to trailblaze. And those who trailblaze, who create their own path, their creations shine brighter than bright against the backdrop of a the fully mapped reality of an old world.

The creative energy swirled and drawn to one trailblazer is hundreds of times more powerful than that drawn to someone on autopilot. It doesn’t take much creativity to re-create something that’s already been done. Like water following a worn groove, it naturally goes there, and doesn’t need much other than the momentum of its given path to keep on going. That is, as long as it doesn’t put on the brakes and actually look around. If it does, it gets bumped in to and urged along by its fellows on the path of the known, and eased (or not so eased) back into the groove. Trailblazers always been considered dangerous, because they’re so powerful.

New thoughts. New connections. The power of potentiality drawn to a trailblazer is immense. Worlds move at their request – at your request – and a field of color and light is created where before there was nothing but a possibility.

This is in everyone’s power, and that power is stirring. That urge is growing and that song is singing, “More ! I was meant for more, I know it!”

“Song bird, sing your tune, for none may sing it just as you do. … Sing, there’s a song in search of a voice that is silent.” (Neil Diamond, Jonathan Livingston Seagull Soundtrack)

And you know what? It’s true. You are meant for more. You are meant to fly, to soar, to sing. You are meant to Be, to live and love this time-space continuum into new shapes and forms that breathe life into this stagnating old world creation.

And how do you do this? By claiming your creative spark. On purpose. It’s scary, I know…believe me, I know very well how daunting it can seem. The thing is, the very beginnings of a path – a wider one than that old-world creation – has already been trailblazed. A very wide one, big enough for all of us, all of our worlds, to spread our wings and grow into our newest potential. You are not alone.

We are the second generation of humanity. We have arrived, and one by one, we are claiming our names, spreading our wings, and learning how to fly.

There’s a great, wide sky out there to explore, and it is SO beautiful it’s beyond description. Let’s describe it…together.

In great love, appreciation and joy for your Being,
Akira Dawn

In honor of my voice, of singing my song and blazing my own Dawn-like trail, the website Awakening with Dawn will be arriving soon Blog with guest writers also learning how to fly, radio show with guest speakers about amazing things that bring them joy, and monthly limited-seating tele-calls specifically intended to bring you to your next level of awakening…

This is all being created with little or no overhead, and so all that is offered will be freely given, save for limited seating classes for those who are really wanting for more.

Target Date: 01-07-08
Target Site: awakeningwithdawn.com
Requests: Contributors? Interested in writing for the blog and sharing your unique view? In being a guest on the show and sharing your joy over the ‘airwaves’? Feel drawn to offer support somehow? Please, by all means. Email me at dawn@awakeningwithdawn.com Let’s play and sing and dance together.

‘ello!

Well, everything kinda kerploded here in a big way in Sedona… However, before the kerplosion, and through the kerplosion, I’ve found what it was I came here to find: MySelf.

So, I’m going to be on the road once again, starting this morning. I am going to be heading roughly east, with the end goal being back home (though home has been so fixed up to get it ready to sell that I may barely recognize it!) Reston, VA. I plan to take my time, explore some areas that we’re thinking would be nice to live in.

First – Albuquerque. I liked New Mexico on my way through it to get here, and my husband is even thinking of flying out there to meet me (for my birthday, the 15th! ) so we can check the area out together. I always wanted to see Taos… and Boulder…

So, yep! The adventure continues. Stay tuned!

‘ello!

Well, in the news from the now portion of things, I can definitely say that going through a memory of your birth, and embracing yourself as the comforting, ever-present presence in your own life, and then hitting ‘play’ on your life from that point forward – it has some major impacts! Feels, in a lot of ways, like I just went through the stages of development at supersonic speed, with that new presence in place… I’d say I’m at the young adult, late teen years stage, today. And today, I’ve begun working with Presence – more on that later.

The interesting part (and a part that would have freaked me out not all that long ago but with which I feel peaceful now) is that while going through it, I was each stage. I saw the world through it. Yesterday morning I was totally fired up about going and getting a job so I could buy a new wardrobe and thus re-define my physical presence (an early teen kinda thing to do). I was absolutely certain that that was my life purpose at that time.

I got some info from my roomie about where a good place to go to get a job as a healer – because that’s what I enjoy doing the most at the moment. And I was all set to go, car keys in hand, when I got a new sense of myself – that comforting ‘adult-like’ presence I mentioned in the first paragraph, that I had put in place, was speaking to me. It said, do some readings for yourself, get more info about this place and why you’re going.

So I did. And it said that I was being impulsive, interested in defining mySelf by the outside world, again (the clothes make the person, etc. etc.) and that it was okay, but that such things would come naturally as I defined myself. From the inside out, this time.

And yet I still felt like going to the place, like this was the next natural step. So I did! And it was a beautiful place, just the kind of healing/teaching center I would create if I were going to make one And the people were awesome, too! I’ll be going back on Sunday for their guided meditation morning – and I may be the one doing the guiding! It was really important, I realized, that I went with my focus open. My embracing inner adult voice had been right, and I began to trust it even more. It knew things. Had good things to say that would help me have even gooder experiences.

Gooder experiences like learning the Heart Link! Here it is, in a nutshell:

• Move into your heart space – bring your awareness to your heart center, and begin to gather more and more and more love and gratitude for yourself, your higher self, your guides, angels, your soul, your life. Really get it going, pump it up with anything you can – memories of good things that have happened, how it feels to love someone, petting a cat. Feel Good.
• Then take your thumb and middle finger and connect their tips, in what’s called a Mudra. You do this with both hands.
• Theeeen, envision a silver gold tube (just the exact size of that circle made by your thumb and middle finger!) running from your heart, up through your neck and head, and out on higher, into the cosmos, leading right to the heart of your higher self.
• Send that love in your own heart on this physical plane up to your higher self’s heart.
• There’s a moment here where you feel nothing as it leaves you – a sudden blankness that feels kind of sad, actually. My thought at this moment was, why do this? Why’s my higher self need my love? I didn’t like this absence, vacuum feeling, but I trusted the guy and decided to just see what would happen.
• It ends up, he said, that they (guides, angels, higher self) live on this stuff, our gratitude enlightens their experience, and their gratitude for our gratitude is HUGE. They make these loving gratitude feelings exponentially stronger – then send it right on back down to you!
  • I experienced it as waves of warmth and tingly loving joy that was mine, but not quite mine – like it was being given to me from a source outside myself, but it also had a familiar flavor.
• He said that, after you practice this for a while, soon you’ll be able to just touch your thumb to forefinger to experience the feeling. It’s an ongoing giving and receiving that you’re just tapping in to with choice of focus.

The stage I was in, when I wrote the last post The Idea, was total trust void looking to define my reality by relationship to the world. Prolly around pre-toddler age. I was totally in the grip of being defined by outsideness at that time. It evolved and matured through yesterday, and here I am now with an interest in my true Self. What am I when I’m not defined by outsideness?

The ideas that came through from the void, the desire for expression from a space undefined by much at all, were potent and pure. They’re definitely going to take me to the next space for my own expression. So, I am going to allow that to unfold naturally while I go on to explore this presence thing – who am I? If so much of me can go through a reboot, and define my experience of reality without my consciously even realizing it, what remains? Who am I, really?

And so I’m adding a new book, the Mandala of Being, by Richard Moss, to my daily explorations – the third book my husband got me for our anniversary. The link goes to the website, and on the website is a free 5 week e-course that I just signed up for. Can’t vouch for it, yet, but I can say that so far – the book is amazing.

And now, on to the Half-Way point segment!

‘That’s what change is supposed to be like…’

This one comes from my calling Pat, my second night out on the road, checked in and resting in the hotel for the night. I was totally shocked at what I had done, and I was expressing it to her. It was a bit of a ‘Oh crap, what was I thinking?!’ moment. I had chosen to drive across the country. Not because something bad had happened. Not because the original situation became intolerable – in fact, it was great! Friends, house, husband, total security comfort and stability… I had done it because it felt like the next step.

I’d never experienced change in that way, before. Major change for me had always been traumatic and huge and seemingly thrust upon me by circumstance, I realized. Or at the very least initiated with someone else… This was all me, and it was totally just me, with no solid explanation for why – I wasn’t moving for a job, or family, or anything. I was because… it felt right. I left security and comfort behind because some unknown thing called me to change, called me to be more of myself, somehow – even though I didn’t (and in a lot of ways still don’t) know what that meant, exactly.

It ends up that a whole lot of people in Sedona have the same story.

Anyway, I was telling Pat about this, and she said, “That’s what change is supposed to be like.” This was an entirely new concept for me. All our lives, we work to gain stability, security, comfort, ease… I was walking away from that, and I didn’t even know why exactly other than that I felt called to do so – and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the leaving the nest thing, the bird in a golden cage, thing.

We have no drive to create, to be more of who we are, when we’re 100% comfortable. Safety, security, stability – they’re all illusions. We work for them on a 3D physical level because on a 3D physical level that’s always what we’re seeking. The prime directive of our physical existence is to survive. But our spiritual existence, the reason we’re having a 3D physical experience in the first place, thrives through expansion.

And we are not pushed by our protect-the-self/protect-the-body selves to expand when we’re comfortable. In fact, we’re pushed to stay safe, to retain that comfort – stagnant good, the body/self in a safe space says. This is where you want to be, all you’ve worked for. This is who you are. This is the point of your life.

But the truth of it is – it’s not the point at all. And this is why so many people are dissatisfied – they have arrived, according to all that their outside world, their understanding of how things work, what everyone’s told them, what they believe, and their body. And yet that arrival is empty. Entropy begins as the soul, the true self, has nowhere to go – no song to sing. Goal accomplished. But, they feel empty inside…this can’t be right. This isn’t the way things are, there must be a need for more stability, more of whatever it is they feel brings them security and comfort. And more. And more…

And if they’re lucky, something happens to knock them out of the cycle. Their soul comes a-knocking with the brush of an angel wing at first (there’s something more for you!) in the form of dreams, thoughts, chance meetings…If these aren’t heard, or are heard but only followed to the point that the person remains totally safe and makes no real changes, then comes the 2X4. Loss of a job, loss of a relationship, illness… They’re shown that the stability and security that they’re clinging to so ferociously is an illusion (there’s something more for you!) and put into a space where they begin to question – is there something more for me? And then comes the thoughts and dreams again…

I went through this cycle over and over and over. I was quite stubborn. I refused to take a chance. I saw the signs, I had the dreams, met people, but I refused to reach for something outside my comfort zone… then my dad died. This shook me up, but still I refused to look beyond the sandcastle I was painstakingly trying to build. And so the came the illness in spades, my body mirroring to me the rigid, unflexible mindset I was holding on to so tightly. I still didn’t listen. I clung – ferociously – trying to shore up the sandcastle that I had believed was my life, what I was supposed to be doing.

And then my mom died, less than a year later, and everything collapsed. I finally couldn’t do it anymore. No support, so sick I couldn’t work, so soul-starved I could barely breath… The sandcastle had been totally washed away by the waves, the wind, the rain – the stable world shown to be nothing more than an illusion. I had nothing left to lose. I finally looked up. And I realized that the world was a WHOLE lot bigger and amazing than I had ever imagined – it was only fear that had made it tiny and tinier for me. Fear, driven by the unfulfillable desire for ultimate comfort, security and stability from the outside in.

Now comes the time of learning – ultimate comfort, security and stability from the inside out isn’t just a possibility…it can be a reality – for anyone.

Change doesn’t have to be about the circumstantially forced loss of that which we’ve outgrown because we refused to let it go because it’s really, really comfortable and known and secure. Our souls call for us to be free, little by little, all the time. All the time. And all it takes for us to answer that call is to begin to reach beyond the boxes we’ve created for ourselves. To consider the possibility that the unknown may actually not be scary – that, in fact, it may be glorious. As soon as we reach, we’ll find those angel wings reaching right back for us, helping us out of our box one baby step at a time.

I’m realizing that as spirits having a human experience, we’re not intended to spend our lives trying to build secure nests for ourselves, and then hold on to them for dear life for the rest of our lives… We’re meant to fly, even if, according to our stability/comfort/security selves, this makes little sense.

Our stability/comfort/security driven selves are not our real selves – they’re as much of an illusion, I’m coming to realize, as the sandcastles they build around them. These selves are driven by and built on just as shaky of a foundation as the castles they so desire: Fear of the Unknown.

A fear driven self surrounding itself with a fear based creation/life, so it has a structure, a box, to exist in. Talk about ack!, huh?

So, I’m just now really beginning to realize that I did this for a majority of my life… And Pat saying what she did, that helped me to realize that I’m not so afraid of change anymore. That this trip, if nothing else, was a really big deal because it was me, putting my actions where my beliefs have come to reside. Even though it makes not sense from the self of me that wants that nest.

Interestingly enough, though…I feel more stable, comfortable and secure now than I ever have in my life. It feels weird to say that, but it’s true… I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. But right Now…I’m fine.

‘ello!

I woke up with an idea that came, fully formed, as if it had always been there just waiting for me to stumble across it… The idea is so simple, yet powerful, that I feel like talking about it in a whisper – as if to speak or write it out loud might burst the bubble of excitement and possibility I’m feeling. As if reality might crash in and mark it with a ‘impractical’ or ‘undesirable’ or any of a number of idea-stopping words…

But…I have to put it out there, because this is, in essence, for you guys – and big time for me, of course! As the vehicle for the expression of joy and empowerment that can bring it to you: If it is wanted. If it can be useful. You, the readers, are the only ones who can answer that for me…

Firstly, this thing seems to be fluid by nature in its mode of conveyance – internet classroom, radio, blog, in person, phone teleconference…anything that can work as a mode of expression, all driven by a book or… a blog or something. I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s the idea(s), fully formed, pulled out of nowhere (now here, hehe) upon waking:

“Wouldn’t it be neat to tell my stories of awakening in, like, a cookbook form? Like…story, followed by the key concepts it brought up and illustrated, and a how-to of how to do these things for yourself. Wouldn’t it be neat to travel from place to place, collecting new stories all the time even as I go from workshop to workshop, teaching the things in the stories in person? Like each of the ‘recipes’ would be condensed into a Menu that people could choose from, but instead of a price for each item, there would be an amount of time – and even a wine list perhaps of recommended extras that would go best with each of the ‘meals’. Hehe. Like the wines would be the things that are just experienced by the participants, given by me – like, light body activation, or ‘meeting your guides’ meditation, etc. Then what would be the dessert? Gotta have the dessert. Hmmm! Wouldn’t it be neat to do a monthly radio show where I share the best tidbits? Wouldn’t it be neat to travel for the good-weather part of the year and then return to home base and work on a new book? A Cookbook for the Soul, Recipes for Awakening to Your Highest Potential. “

Here are some clarifying ideas that have been coming to me…

I am, by nature, a jack of all trades… Passingly good at just about everything, specialized in nothing… I’ve found this frustrating as far as discovering ‘my path’ in life because, well, it means that I can’t go and say This Is What I Do. All I’ve been able to say thus far is This Is Who I Am – At the Moment. I’m actually really good at that.

I am charismatic and gregarious, able to relate to just about anyone, in a way that they can understand and make use of. I seem to have the ability, likely gained from all of my time working so hard using my empathy to be sure I pleased people, to drop into the language and mindset being used by whoever I’m talking to… My husband is a master of this when it comes to speaking concepts. I seem to be a master of this when it comes to describing energy and intent and life.

I want to be fluid and alive and creative and fulfilled and useful and empowering – but I haven’t known how because I kept expecting to specialize. I have learned SO many things, it’s not even funny, all in search of The Thing that would be My Thing… What I have ended up with is a ton of things I love… but none of them The Thing that I am supposed to go out there and share with others… I’ve also been in many environments – in person, over the phone, radio, internet classrooms, one on one and in big groups. I’m passingly good in expressing through all of them, but specialized in none (sound familiar? )

I loved traveling across the country, asking God/Source/Whatever to put me in touch with those I was meant to be in touch with. Having a reason to do this – not just a reason, but something that fulfills me and that I get to share with others? I find that idea endlessly exciting.

I know that I am of the family Archangel Michael – the empowerers, the bringers of light and life to those who are ready for it and who desire it. Acting in that capacity is what I find most fulfilling. Most enjoyable. I’ve had an odd time of figuring all this out because I kept running in to the concepts of working with just one person, and working with a group – a if they were supposed to happen simultaneously or something, but I never knew how. Now I think I know…they build upon each other, the experiences with individuals giving rise to ideas and practices that can be shared with and used by lots of people.

I have learned the foundations for so many self-healing, self-empowering practices that I often spontaneously come up with my own techniques from combinations of many other practices – new things to be shared. I want it all to grow with me – the idea of just teaching the same exact things over and over and over sounds utterly depressing, to me. I want to be a force for synchronicity, bringing those things most needed in the moment by those who have requested my presence…

I’m very practical in what I do. I want the things I share to be cheap, easy, comfortable and powerful – and I think that’s what a lot of people are looking for. There are so many things out there that people can buy, earn, whatever… I had someone ask me who my Reiki master was, as if I was being judged by my pedigree or something – that was weird, but actually very real in many people’s perceptions. I’m not about that at all – I’m about easy, accessible empowerment for everyone. Self empowerment, that they can thing bring to others in any way they like – nothing I share would be trademarked or have strictures placed on it. Hehe, I would be OpenSource, like they say about computer programs whose code is given out to anyone who knows what to do with it, to allow them to change it and make new things out of it. I’m not interested in trademarking or pedigreeing or anything like that – I’m way too interested in being Real for that to appeal to me.

You know that whole ‘when the student is ready, the teacher will come’ saying? Well… I’m thinking of taking that to a literal place… I have no idea if this is possible, but… What if I just put myself out there, allowing people who feel inspired and resonate to form groups that then book me to come out and teach/share with them? That the fee or whatever be the traveling costs for me split among them – food, plane ticket or gas, hotel. That I let them choose the venue and pay for it and do all that busy work that I don’t much care for, getting the event together and I just show up?

This is something I can do, now… I kept thinking that I would have to be fully healed and together and to have reached some exalted level of consciousness or something in order to be of service… Or that I would have had to have written lots of books and Become Somebody before I could really teach people anything. But what if another human being, sharing their own pain and triumphs – so similar yet speaking from the other side of having worked through it and triumphed… What if that’s what people are really looking for? A sharing and guiding, more than a teaching/instructing?

I’m not sure, but, this seems to be a culmination of everything I have become…like the natural conclusion for the next new beginning… maybe this is that seed that the Great Round stage was talking about

So… what do you think? Is this something that can be done? Is it something that is worth being done – would people find it useful? Are there things I haven’t thought of?

Normally, when I have a new possibly life-changing idea I cherish it and keep it safe and hidden for a really long time, working out all the details before sharing it with anyone, and only then first sharing it with people I know really well. For some reason – and I honestly don’t know what that reason is – it felt really important to just…put this out there. And see what happens. So, that’s what I’m doing.

There are pieces I don’t have, or something – ideas that people offering opinions can give me that can bring it all together. You, the reader(s) are the glue that would hold this together, and the whole idea is to be OpenSource… It doesn’t get more leading edge, in the moment open source than this.

So please, if you have anything at all you’d like to share, or an opinion, or an idea, or, hehe – if you want to be my first booking, I’ll take that too, hehehe

‘ello again!

I’m back to recap s’more, but first – news from the Now My husband got me this really neat book of Mandalas that you color in yourself, for our anniversary (It’s called Coloring Mandalas for insight, healing, and self expression, but Susanne F. Fincher btw!) I began working with it yesterday, and there was a whole section in the front that describes the various stages of what they call The Great Mandala, aka the cycle of life which, spiral-like, repeats as you come to a better and better understanding of your true Self.

I had been outside, enjoying the sun and the sound of the wind and the water gurgling in the fountain, and one of my roomies came and offered me a flower essence to try, rose something… I did, and not long after I felt very floaty and peaceful, even more than I had been already. I went inside, finishing up reading about the various stages while laying down – one of them is described as first occurring while you’re aware yet still in the womb. I thought this was interesting.

I flipped to the first page you could color in the book, and there was a person in the circle, curled in on themselves. I put the book down, suddenly feeling the pressure, the darkness, and a claustrophobic fear of what it had been like. This really surprised me, and I closed my eyes and went with it, to see where it would take me. I had no idea just what was there waiting for me…

I described it to my friend Steve in a text message, and I think I’m just going to go ahead and re-type that out, here… It’s necessarily short being a text message and all, but still very poignant…

Well, I be queen o’sensitivity, right? So, imagine you’re a baby, empathically in touch with your mom, perfectly happy and safe. Then things start to get a little cramped, a little uncomfortably tight in there. You’re too big to stay, but don’t want to leave – but you’re being forced to. Contractions start, and it’s scary and not safe or happy anymore and you feel crushed, not knowing what you did to deserve this. Mom’s there, though, so somehow it’s okay…but still, it doesn’t feel okay. It’s becoming unbearable. You give up on trusting her, or what’s going on, and start to panic, trying to stop it, to get away from the crushing, to stay where you were happy and safe. You are being forced down and out and away from where you want to to be, so you fight it, trying to go up instead. To hide, to remain embraced, unseparated. This came across to the doctors as my trying to breech the womb – this would be bad.

Suddenly you realize that your first act as an aware being must have been some horrible, cardinal sin of some kind, because all of a sudden mom’s gone, and now you’re trapped, crushed…and all because you didn’t trust, because of something you did. (They had put her under, to perform a C section.) So, you’re totally alone for the first time ever in your existence, and suddenly you experience cold for the first time, too, and real pain, and disorientation and bright lights and the hands of strangers – all of it alone, because you dared to act on your own.

I spent the next few years re-enacting that experience… Being beaten and then thrown in dark, cramped closets, sexually abused and tossed in a closet… No pain was worse than knowing that you were the one that destroyed the no-separation…and that you have the ability to do it again if you choose to act and not trust. So, age 2, age 3, age 4, age 6, 9, 15… I experienced over and over and over again letting go and giving up my power and ability to act because I thought not trusting was the unforgivable sin.

It wasn’t until I was 19 that I faced a situation and changed it using my own will, and I was terrified having done it… I’ve been afraid to act at all, to create on my own, ever since. Better to twist my own body to make it so I can’t act and do something unforgivable and punishable by the worst pain/terror I could ever imagine. I didn’t trust myself…my ability to create… On top of this, I carried an inability to relax into comfort and safety. Being comfortable and safe scared me – I’ve believed that that just means something very bad is about to happen, so I’ve forever been on my guard. Against creating/mis-creating, and that fear/on guard state rises even higher when I’ve been comfortable and happy.

Even the back surgery, at the sacral chakra area… a symptom of a fear to create and feel abundant. There are so many unraveling connections and ohhhhhhh’s going on with this it is amazing.

During this recall time, I was there for my baby self, present in the past, and I felt the overwhelm point where my soul fragmented. I’ve healed these before, at each of those points I mentioned above where abuse took place, but I’ve never encountered one so…Big. It was a soundless scream, a wrenching tearing, and as I embraced it a small part of the me in the Now was a little ‘Uh oh…can I do this? This is REALLY big…’

I reaffirmed the presence of my guides and guardian angels and closed my eyes and went into the scream, and I just about lost it as I experienced it together with my baby self, for the first time. See, I fragmented, instead of allowing myself to experience that scream, back as a baby…if that makes sense… I couldn’t handle it back then (and I was barely able to handle it now!) But, using a crystal, relying on my adult self and my guides, I embraced that scream back into myself, into my lungs and heart, and I cried. A lot.

I felt very odd, afterward. Floaty and free, yet unsure of who I was… I felt okay, elated by what I had done, but I knew I needed to be sure to give myself some extra TLC. I knew there was more to come – putting humpty dumpty back together again can be an arduous process, and my foundation had received such a rocking, I knew much sifting, sorting and resettling was going to be going on… so I went and got a nice easy dinner for myself, and some cuddle socks I had been really wanting from the Life is Good store.

I was scared to go to sleep that night, last night… The dark was darker, and the alone was aloner… I finally did fall asleep, and when I woke up today I was in a major funk. I questioned all my choices, even being in Sedona. I questioned all of my creations, in other words, the last vestiges of an ego fragment leaving the building is usually it putting up a last ditch effort to convince you that you can’t live without it Knowing this helped surprisingly little, though…

I did qigong, sat in the sun, took a walk, drank lots of water, cuddled in my socks, napped, ate extra chocolate, and questioned everything I did for at least half the day. The fear voice was having a heyday, making me question everything. It was interacting with people, doing healing work on second life, talking to Pat last night and Keith and Steve today, interacting with my roomies and doing thing that I know I’m good at that shifted me out of it.

That and beginning to color the mandala I had seen. It showed the cramped person actually being gently held by a cloaked figure. I put a little smile on the cramped person’s face, and she began to look more like she was so relaxed that she was resting in an odd position, rather than being crushed…held gently by this cloaked figure. I gave her golden red hair and blue eyes and a green smile…

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring… how I’ll feel, what I’ll do… I recognize I’m in the stage the Mandala book referred to as Fragmentation… The next stage, if I follow in order, will be Transcendent Ecstasy. I really like the descriptions for the stages, so I’ll share them here, straight from the book

Fragmentation, stage 11, continues the entropy begun in the Gates of Death. This stage is about challenges to your body, and much more. What began as endings in the outer world continue here as a destructuring of your ego to the point that you may feel like a stranger to yourself. (I’ll vouch for that ) This is all a necessary prelude to a major reorganization of your ego. For many this stage is profoundly disturbing, ad they find their belief in the ultimate order of things is challenged. It is not unusual to feel dizzy or nauseated when experiencing this stage.

Your understanding of the nature of reality may be changed by what you experience here in Fragmentation. It may seem that ou have completely lost contact with the Self, but the chaos experienced here is really orchestrated by the Self. The disorganization speeds the letting go that is necessary before your ego cn be restructured in a stronger, mroe complex pattrn in keeping with your potential for wholeness. The Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross knew this stage well. He described it as the Dark Night of the Soul. This stage can bring you intense spiritual experiences.

Transcendent Ecstasy, stage 12, reflects the blissful experience that folllows the struggle of the previous stage. It comes as the result of embracing the limitations of the physical body and stepping beyond into a much larger dimension where spirit permeates and supports everything. In this stage, you experience the freedom of transcending beliefs that ha become too narrow for you. It is the gift of old age and those rare moments of ecstasy earlier in life. You knowingly surrender our ego to th e care of the Self, and yu are rewarded with a glimpse of ultimate reality, a sense of the divine order and your rightful place within it. On a spiritual level, stage 12 is a moment of understanding the divine through direct experience, rather than by intellect. It is a moment to be treasured as the essence of your circling the Great Round. Take it with you like a seed to be planted in the darkness for your next beginning in stage 1, the Void.

I think, tomorrow, I’ll color in the cloaked figure with a little green smile and gold aura, too…

Hehe, and now I’m so sleepy I don’t feel like recapping anymore, so, I tink I’ll just change the title of this to News from the Now instead of Part 2, and return to recapping tomorrow or the next day. I will explain the next one, though! It’s a short one

Intentional Intentions

Before I left on the road trip to Sedona, I said a prayer, made a request of my higher self, god, etc. I asked to please be put in touch with those people that I was intended be put in touch with…that I was open to experiencing people, and healing and being healed, the whole way. And that’s just what happened, and turned out to be the fodder for almost all of the really cool stories to follow.