Alright so first off, if you haven’t seen Avatar yet, you gotta go watch it!! Whether you choose to watch the movie in 2D or 3D, both offer an amazing experience.

For those of you unfamiliar with the plot, the movie takes place on a distant planet named Pandora that is home to these blue humanoid aliens called the Na’vi. They are very much like the Native Americans with bows and arrows and a deep appreciation and respect for life and an understanding of the interconnectedness of all life. The US military comes in to basically drive them out so they can mine for this mineral called unobtainium, killing off many of the natives in the process.

There are some beautiful spiritual messages in the movie and the way it’s all illustrated is absolutely amazing. Just… wow…

The forest and plantlife on the planet is phosphorescent and iridescent in a very heavenly way and even glows for a moment every time you step on the grass. The sky is full of gorgeous planets and moons. Standing on that planet and looking up into the heavens strangely feels like home…

Their diety is a benevolent goddess named Eywa who is basically the living energy that runs through all things. One particularly great passage from the movie took place when one of characters prays to Eywa to take their side and help during the invasion of the military. Another character responded that Eywa doesn’t take sides. She only helps preserve the balance of life.

Heck, even the credits of the movie were amazing. Make sure you stay past the end and watch them to see how many people were involved in the creation of this film. My jaw literally hung open watching them scroll by. It was so nice to see that many (thousands of) people join together in the name of creating such a conscious movie, helping reinforce the understanding that all this “oneness stuff” isn’t so alternative and out there, but is rapidly becoming integrated as a part of mainstream life.

So yeah, if you haven’t seen this movie, I highly highly recommend checking it out!

For those of you who have seen the movie, what was your experience? What did you like about it? How did the movie impact you?

The other day Matt and I sat down and had another excellent session together. In this one we dove straight into a lot of my conditioning. It was pretty deep and intense, but left me feeling surprisingly light and free in the end.

One thing that really left an impression on me was his level of acceptance towards what is, his love towards ALL of life. You can see him discuss this in the following video. It’s probably one of my favorite videos I’ve seen on living life.

One thing I really liked, and I don’t wanna call it a technique because it’s more like a natural expression of the acceptance that rests within, is his response towards “problems” when people tell him that something’s wrong with reality. For example,

“I’m so mad that XYZ happened!”

“Of course you are!”

“But it doesn’t feel fair!”

“Of course it doesn’t!”

“Don’t you think that this shouldn’t have happened?”

“All I know is that what happened happened.”

In an incredibly compassionate and accepting way that I hope gets conveyed in text here, he’s totally allowing the world and others to be as they are. It feels as if the words being spoken with sense of peace and openness in his heart. While he doesn’t follow people where they’re going energetically, he’s fully granting them permission to experience their reality without invalidating or resisting it in any way whatsoever. Pretty cool.

Receiving Such Acceptance

What’s surprising to me about this is that once someone gives us such deep permission to experience ourselves in this way, there’s an automatic and spontaneous stopping of the mind. The mind just goes “uhhhhh…”

Try it with yourself on any of your complaints about life and see what happens.

In my experience, when I grant myself full permission to suffer, that suffering just dissolves on its own, though my ego may then try and toss up more problems that it wants to suffer about, but this process doesn’t last very long in the face of such acceptance. I find that I don’t have to let go of my suffering. It lets go of me!

I’d be curious to hear you guys share your experiences as well.

It’s like the suffering and complaining needs resistance to continue, and this resistance may come in the form of, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. That’s terrible. You’re right, that shouldn’t have happened. Life isn’t fair. Something else should have happened to you. The way life is isn’t acceptable.”

There definitely seems like there’s a difference between acceptance in the form of “Yes your suffering is justified” and a deeper version of acceptance in the form of “Yes you have every right to believe and experience whatever you so choose. Life is the way it is, and your perspective is an inseparable part of what is, and I have no argument with what is.”

Sessions with Matt

For those of you who also resonate with Matt, his teachings, and his way of being in the world, if you would like some guidance in moving beyond some of your unconscious blocks and misconceptions, I would definitely recommend considering scheduling a personal healing session with Matt. If you click on that link, you’ll see that his sessions are very much applicable to those of us who have been walking the spiritual pathway for a while and are getting stuck on some of the deeper and more subtle aspects of it. It can be very helpful to work with someone who’s been where we are and can offer us the insights that we are having trouble seeing. Being helped is a wonderful thing.

Whether you feel this is what your energy wants right now or not, it’s totally cool either way, and I thank you for walking the journey here with me. I hope that you, too, find all that you seek.

A memory popped into mind the other day while I was out hiking: There’s this scene in a movie (The Next Karate Kid) where a monk in a monastery is slowly going for a walk, sweeping in front of him as he steps. Out of compassion for all living things, he sweeps the little critters along his path off to the side so that he doesn’t accidentally squash them with his upcoming steps.

After this memory came to mind, another duality collapsed within me: The duality of animate and inanimate objects.

There’s the idea about having compassion for all living things. The way I interpret that idea, it’s basically like recognizing the Divine in all of life, in the living aliveness.

Yet what I’m seeing is that EVERYTHING is IT. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a person, an animal, an insect, a tree, a rock, the chair, or the air. Everything is the One. All of Life is revered in all its forms, living or not.

Rather than having compassion for only all living things, what arises is having compassion for all of existence.

We begin to revere and appreciate even the air that lovingly flows in and out of our bodies, the chair that selflessly supports and cradles our bodies, the nutrient-rich soil which nourishes and provides our food, the clouds that contribute to the crucial water cycle…

Conscious?

With the collapse of animate and inanimate, this doesn’t mean that suddenly animate and inanimate objects are identically the same. Of course not. Each manifestation of the One is unique, even though it is nevertheless the One.

What we call inanimate objects don’t have a consciousness in the way that we traditionally think of consciousness. They exist, and yet they have no idea that they exist.

What we call animate objects (living beings) have a consciousness in the way we traditionally think of consciousness. They are conscious, but they may not necessarily have the capacity to, like humans, know that they are, that they exist.

Humans have this unique capacity for being conscious of consciousness, to be a vessel through which consciousness can awaken to itself.

In a way, we could say that people are more conscious than birds who are more conscious than tables.

Yet, in the same way that some people are more conscious than other people, this in no way makes anything any more or less the One.

Everything is completely and totally, equally and infinitely the One, regardless of the degree of consciousness.

The degree of consciousness in a particular manifestation of the One may certainly determine the experience of that manifestation, or even if it can have a conscious experience in the first place, sure, but that in no way alters the fact that it is an inseparable manifestation of the One, animate or inanimate, living or dead.

Everything you could possibly look at is the One, including the one looking… perhaps especially so…

All is the One. All of existence and nonexistence. All is IT.

I recently had a brief interlude with a woman who was really into feminism. She said that feminism was about equality between the two genders, yet when I inquired about why it was called feminism as opposed to something like gender equality, she got heated, pointing out that it was about women having the same rights as men. (This being equal to That. Duality.)

I left the conversation, noticing how fired up and angry she was getting, and figured I’d move the discussion here.

It’s really common for us to move from one extreme to another when trying to find a balance. It’s similar to how a pendulum needs to swing from one end to another before gradually finding balance in the middle. A totally normal process in life. Nothing bad or wrong happening here.

When it comes to finding a sense of harmony between two apparently polar opposites and uncovering the essence of harmony and balance, ultimately what we’ll need to do is to throw out the labels entirely when we look at a person.

Are you a man or a woman? Who cares?

Are you black, white, or something else? Who cares?

Are you rich or poor? Who cares?

Are you gay or straight? Who cares?

Are you asleep or enlightened? Who cares?

Are you my enemy or my friend? Who cares?

Are you my significant other or a beggar on the street? Who cares?

When you look at a ladybug, do you care if it has 10 spots on its back or 8? Does this change how you feel about the ladybug? Probably not… For one reason or another, we buy into an arbitrary set of rules that say that this trait makes this person more worthy than that trait on that person. Baloney!

Unconditional Love doesn’t look at ANY of that. In fact, these differences are utterly irrelevant!

The essence of that which you are is what it is regardless of any superficial appearances. The Love that flows unconditionally is just that: unconditional. It doesn’t flow in spite of XYZ, as if it tolerates something it doesn’t like and yet puts up with it anyways, no no. It just doesn’t even consider XYZ at ALL.

By analogy, the sun doesn’t care if you are a good person or a bad person, black or white, man or woman. It shines on everyone equally because that’s who it is.

Regardless of if H2O takes the form of water, ice, or steam, it’s all still H2O. It’s about looking beyond appearances, into the sameness beyond name and form.

This isn’t to say that we should stop differentiating between this and that, man and woman, black and white, and somehow lose the ability to tell the difference. What IS being pointed to is to not let any mental judgments come between the sense of Oneness and Love that is everpresent in this moment.

This Unity we can feel with “others” arises prior to any mental sense of differentiation, prior to any mental judgment or ranking system.

You are loved. You are worthy. You are acceptable. You are forgiven. You are beautiful. Just the way you are. Whether you change anything or change nothing at all, your inherent sense of worth will remain just the same.

By virtue of that which you are: a nameless expression of All That Is, you are inherently worthy of all the freedom, joy, love, and appreciation.

In the end, it’s not about women’s rights, gay rights, animal rights, human rights, or any of that, for in focusing on “the rights of this subgroup,” you are automatically creating a sense of separateness, even if “this subgroup over here” is ideally meant to be equal in whatever way to “that subgroup over there.” In practice, this rarely happens…

Returning home to a place of Oneness ultimately leads us to an end of all division and separateness within, even though differentiation may still be expressed without. Externally, Oneness does not imply sameness.

We are ALL ultimately on the same team here. In fact, there is no team. There is just this, here and now. There is only this. This is it. What we call you and I are not separate. We are not two.

If you’re going to be an activist standing up for the rights of someone or something, stand up for the rights of everyone. Stand for the rights of universal peace and acceptance. Stand for unconditional love for the one and the all.

It’s not about this group or that group, but all groups and no groups. It’s about that which is beyond grouping.

It’s about the letting go of dualistic separation and really, truly, reconnecting back to the inherent sense of Oneness that never actually left and is always here.

Raise two fingers in peace, one finger in unity, open your hand as emptiness, and stand tall as All That Is.

Love. <3

I recently found out (this time through facebook status updates since I don’t watch the news) that California voted to uphold Proposition 8, banning gay marriages.

It’s a pretty hot topic, with lots of polarized debate, and it’s not something that I normally talk about since politics just flat out doesn’t interest me.

That said, this whole situation is like a thermometer. It’s simply showing us the level of consciousness of the collective at the time of the vote, as well as allowing people to see who they’re choosing to be in relationship to it, just like everything else in life.

The collective hasn’t shifted totally to unconditional allowance in one fell swoop, but it is shifting, piece by piece.

It used to be that a decision such as allowing gay marriage was completely unthinkable. The fact that it’s even up for discussion is already a wonderful step in the direction of equality. No we’re not there yet, but the momentum is still flowing in that direction, as it has been for quite some time...

It’s like the civil rights movement with black people. Racial equality didn’t happen all at once overnight, but as a process of evolution, step by step.

Recognizing and appreciating the shift in the direction of equality, and standing for equality and unconditional acceptance ourselves, we can choose to accept those who don’t accept full equality yet, seeing them as equal in value to us.

Those with another perspective are simply unique facets of life expressing another aspect of itself. Everything is the One in expression. Other people may certainly have different beliefs, different programming, and a different upbringing, but that in no way invalidates them as beings worthy of love and acceptance.

This situation gives us the opportunity to be the change we wish to see in the world.

No matter what decisions people make, how they vote, or who they choose to be, we can accept them fully as they are.

The Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples when a man came and spit on his face. He wiped it off, and he asked the man, “What next? What do you want to say next?” The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on somebody’s face, he will ask, “What next?” He had no such experience in his past. He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted. Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to bribe the man. But Buddha was like neither, he was not angry nor in any way offended, nor in any way cowardly. But just matter-of-factly he said, “What next?” There was no reaction on his part.

Buddha’s disciples became angry, they reacted. His closest disciple, Ananda, said, “This is too much, and we cannot tolerate it. He has to be punished for it. Otherwise everybody will start doing things like this.”

Buddha said, “You keep silent. He has not offended me, but you are offending me. He is new, a stranger. He must have heard from people something about me, that this man is an atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their track, a revolutionary, a corrupter. And he may have formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spit on me, he has spit on his notion. He has spit on his idea of me because he does not know me at all, so how can he spit on me?

“If you think on it deeply,” Buddha said, “he has spit on his own mind. I am not part of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say because this is a way of saying something. Spitting is a way of saying something. There are moments when you feel that language is impotent: in deep love, in intense anger, in hate, in prayer. There are intense moments when language is impotent. Then you have to do something. When you are angry, intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him, you are saying something. I can understand him. He must have something more to say, that’s why I’m asking, “What next?”

The man was even more puzzled! And Buddha said to his disciples, “I am more offended by you because you know me, and you have lived for years with me, and still you react.”

Puzzled, confused, the man returned home. He could not sleep the whole night. When you see a Buddha, it is difficult, impossible to sleep again the way you used to sleep before. Again and again he was haunted by the experience. He could not explain it to himself, what had happened. He was trembling all over and perspiring. He had never come across such a man; he shattered his whole mind and his whole pattern, his whole past.

The next morning he was back there. He threw himself at Buddha’s feet. Buddha asked him again, “What next? This, too, is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language. When you come and touch my feet, you are saying something that cannot be said ordinarily, for which all words are a little narrow; it cannot be contained in them.” Buddha said, “Look, Ananda, this man is again here, he is saying something. This man is a man of deep emotions.”

The man looked at Buddha and said, “Forgive me for what I did yesterday.”

Buddha said, “Forgive? But I am not the same man to whom you did it. The Ganges goes on flowing, it is never the same Ganges again. Every man is a river. The man you spit upon is no longer here. I look just like him, but I am not the same, much has happened in these twenty-four hours! The river has flowed so much. So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge against you.”

“And you also are new. I can see you are not the same man who came yesterday because that man was angry and he spit, whereas you are bowing at my feet, touching my feet. How can you be the same man? You are not the same man, so let us forget about it. Those two people, the man who spit and the man on whom he spit, both are no more. Come closer. Let us talk of something else.”

Oregon Autumn by Marc Adamus

Most of us have qualities about ourselves that society would judge as less than “ideal”… whatever that is. Maybe we’re not really really ridiculously good looking, maybe we’re overweight, maybe we’re gay, maybe we’ve got ADD, maybe we’re not the smartest cookie in the batch… whatever. Everyone’s got something..

The thing is though, in this lifetime, you’re not meant to be anything other than who and what you really are. You’re here to BE YOURSELF, the unique expression of the infinite you.

You don’t have to box yourself in to some arbitrary idealized standard in order to be lovable, acceptable, and worthy. Nope!

Looking At Our Bad Side

Whatever energy you find within yourself, whether “good” or “bad,” it’s there for a reason. It was created by your energy. There are no accidents and no mistakes. It’s not random.

Whether that “unacceptable” energy is something to be healed and transformed or it’s meant to be something we experience throughout the whole of our lives, whatever role that energy is here to teach us about ourselves, it is what it is and so it’s up to us to accept that energy and allow it to be, without resistance.

If that energy is a block that’s meant to be dissolved, it will be through non-resistance. If it’s something that’s meant to be expressed and experienced in this lifetime, then we’ll allow ourselves to express it and experience it fully without judgment, guilt, or condemnation.

We can allow the energy to do what it needs to do. It’s got its own intelligence. You are that intelligence. It’s not separate from you. You know what to do.

Accepting Ourselves Now

Right now, we simply are the way we are. We may certainly be different later on, yet ironically it’s through full and total acceptance of who we are now that we find ourselves automatically rising up to the healthiest and most loving and natural state possible.

Paradox!

It is by accepting the here and now that we afford ourselves the highest likelihood of transforming what is here and now into something else.

But I Don’t Want More of It!

There’s this fear that if we accept what’s here, the universe will be like, “Oh, you like this? Okay. We’ll give you more of the same then.” and so things won’t change and we’ll just keep getting more of the same.

It turns out… that’s not the case! What you resist persists and what you look at disappears. In your own experience, has this been the case?

Being Yourself, Regardless of Others’ Judgments

When you’re willing to be yourself regardless of what others think, when you’re willing to be the unique expression of All That Is that you were born to be, whether your talents are absoulutely horrendous, or absoulutely amazing, the willingness and freedom to be yourself is what is really inspirational.

(Fun note: I “accidentally” typed absoulutely instead of absolutely. It’s gonna stay that way for now.)

Tools to Help Accept Yourself Fully As You Are

There are some tools and techniques that we can use to help us accept ourselves to ever-increasing degrees.

Two tools that I’d highly recommend are EFT and The Sedona Method.

There are many more tools, and even things that don’t involve tools or strategies. When it comes to self-acceptance, what have you guys found valuable?

I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a true story about a woman who once attended my workshops, and is on a spiritual path like all of you. This woman was walking alone in Central Park in New York City at night. A man jumped out from behind the bushes, put a gun to her head, and started raping her. She looked deeply into this man’s eyes, and she could see he was overcome with fear and incredible pain. She began gently stroking his face. “It’s ok,” she said “It’s ok. It’s ok. I love you.” The man stopped immediately and broke into tears. “No one has ever told me they loved me,” he said. “Ever. Not even my parents.” This woman’s compassion touched this man so deeply that it changed his whole life. “This park is dangerous,” he said. “I’ll walk with you and keep you safe.

- David Deida

Wow…

Imagine a person that rooted in Love that even something as intense as being raped can’t shake them from their core of being.

Unconditional Love. Yeah baby!

Do you think you could respond in this way in the heat of the moment? Can you think of another way to respond that is also rooted in Love?

Here’s a great technique for quickly opening your heart chakra. It is especially useful in times where you’re feeling a bit low or not as compassionate as you know you could be.

Along with an open heart chakra comes the energies of acceptance, compassion, and unconditional love. Not to mention, it feels fantastic!

There are a number of excellent heart chakra meditations and visualization techniques to help you open your heart chakra, but today we’re going to focus on one technique to help you open it on the spot.

This technique is sometimes called “The Thymus Thump” because it activates the thymus inside your chest. Metaphysically speaking, you’re activating your heart chakra.

Here’s how you do it. Simultaneously,

• Smile
• Think about someone you love
• Make a fist with your hand
• Thump on the center of your chest in 3 sets of 3 while saying, “ha ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha”

That’s it!

With this one simple technique, your chakra will start to open and you’ll immediately start to feel more loving and open with the world.

One cool thing I like to do is after the 9 thumps, keep thumping until I completely bust out laughing. (This usually only takes a few more thumps.) Spontaneous genuine outbursts of laughter for no reason at all is a great sign of an open heart. It arises simply from feeling good.

Question:

Dear Ariel,

How do you meditate?

Thanks,

F.

My response:

Life itself IS meditation.

The stereotypical sitting cross-legged in a corner just a first stage. It evolves from there.

First you DO meditation. Continue to do it enough and you eventually BECOME meditative. Anything and everything you do becomes imbued with the meditative state because it’s simply a reflection of what you are.

So there’s a lot of value to “doing” meditation, but realize that it’s not an end in an of itself. That said, there are many different types of meditation including chakra meditation, kundalini meditation, watching your breath, being fully present in the Now moment, watching your mind, merging with anything such as people or animals, and so forth. In my experience, all of these techniques have proven themselves to be very valuable and effective, but a few are better suited for those who are interested in enlightenment.

Chakra meditation:

You, and your physical body, are composed of raw energy, clustered around 7 centers called chakras. The lower level chakras have to do with more survival-based concepts such as security and sexual reproduction while the upper chakras are more associated with spiritual concepts such as intuition and universal energy.

Interestingly, learning how to open these chakras provides you with a blueprint for how to run your life in a healthy manner in alignment with the universe.

Insecurities, neediness, scarcity mentality, icy heartedness, fear of others… all these fears vanish once the appropriate chakras have been opened and balanced. Opened, the chakras become a guide for how to live your life from a place of true Love and compassion.

Surrender:

Surrender is one of the most important and life-changing practices one could possibly adopt.

Surrender is a constant process of not resisting or clinging to the moment but instead, continuously turning it over to God. The attention is focused on the process of letting go and not on the content of ‘what’ is being surrendered.

The trick is not to completely turn off your ego, at least not at first, but to simply disidentify from it altogether.

In meditation, simply watch your mind think its thoughts. Do not become the thoughts and identify yourself as “I am the thoughts.” Instead, be the silent witness and watch the thoughts go by on their own.

Doing this, you operate from a state of enlightenment. You merge with the field of consciousness, becoming the awareness in which all things happen.

God is the silent witness that is aware of everything unfolding within itself.

It is both the field AND the content within the field.

So, the trick is simply to watch your mind and everything that happens in life as if it’s some autonomous play that’s happening on its own while identifying with nothing within the play, not even the parts you think you control… especially those parts.

With the practice of this meditation, your field of awareness starts to expand.

Your peripheral vision starts to expand naturally. Instead of focusing on one thing at a time, which is how the ego functions, you begin to see everything all at once, becoming the silent witness.

Focusing on one thing at a time actually takes effort.

Colors become brighter as the filter of the ego drops away. Sensations go straight in without being dulled by the ego’s thoughts and judgments.

Food tastes so much better, richer.

Everything starts to glow, both inanimate objects and animate.

You begin to understand that everything fits together perfectly as part of the totality. Separation becomes completely foreign. The reality seems to be that everything comes together as one magnificent symphony.

The ego operates by concentration, by selecting one individual point and analyzing everything about it, judging it, criticizing it, labeling it, categorizing it. It’s like listening to an orchestra and tuning out every musician except for one single person. You miss almost EVERYTHING by trying to focus on something.

When you surrender the ego, you reach a state of bliss because suddenly, you hear the symphony that’s been going on all around the entire time.

You don’t have to think about or analyze the symphony while listening to it. If you do, you start to lose the richness of the experience. Nothing is lost when you stop thinking and listen to everything as a whole.

This is what enlightenment is all about. It’s SO beautiful when you drop the mind and hear the incredible splendor and sheer gorgeousness going on all around you. It always has been and always will be. EVERYTHING is Love.

The high notes and the low notes, the fast notes and the slow notes all come together to produce the whole symphony. Both the bass and the treble are necessary, and everything in between. The totality is a state of absolute perfection.

Thanks for your question.