So I’ve been on the road about 5 weeks now, driven over 4600 miles, and have been living life in experimentation mode by applying various principles I’ve come to know and seeing how well they really work in this whole “real life” thing. I’ve made amazing friends partying at Mardi Gras, photographed a cheer and dance competition in Texas, skied in New Mexico, camped along the Rio Grande, hiked down into the Grand Canyon, had an ostrich bite my camera, been homeless in Colorado, discovered how every state has is very own distinct vibe, experienced the most ridiculous and consistent degrees of synchronicity, met amazing friends all over the country, had the universe repeatedly bring me all that I want including exactly the type of weather I want when I want it, been given free food and lodging all over the country… Quite honestly this is the most exciting and simultaneously the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.

I’m learning SO much. There’s lots of things I’m learning that I didn’t know before and many things that I’m finally actually GETTING. To use an analogy, let’s say you’ve done martial arts for a while and your instructor keeps telling you, “Hands up! Keep your hands up!” and so you know that your hands need to be up but when you’re practicing, your hands subconsciously keep coming down. It isn’t until you actually spar against an opponent and get clocked in the head that you finally GET IT that your hands need to be UP!  This is a lot like that. As is often said, life is our greatest teacher… There’s a lot of things that I “knew” didn’t work, and if you were to ask me before, I’d tell you that no, such-and-such doesn’t work. If you asked me now, I’d be like “nah dude, really, that shit DOES NOT WORK!!” It’s that transition from mental understanding to gut-level understanding.

This has also been a very emotional experience in that it’s forcing me to really look at myself. I’m basically free to go where I want and do what I want (within reason… a 4 wheel drive or all wheel drive vehicle would be super handy for going up into the snowy mountain peaks and camping in the backcountry, for example, buy I digress…). One thing I wanted from this trip was to really shed light onto the remaining unconscious portions of myself. See, I remember Adyashanti talking about when his awakenings first started, and they also began in the nonabiding form as I am experiencing, when he was going through his process he’d sit down in a coffee shop for hours writing and writing about his beliefs and exploring any area within him that would still go into division. This has been a big part of my journey here. It’s really taking what I’ve learned and applying it all. Jump in with both feet and apply the law of attraction, for example. Apply the ability to surrender and let go when your ego gets bruised and you face your inner darkness head on. Do all the stuff you need to do because now it really matters. It’s crunch time and the pressure’s on.

Freedom of Experience

To what degree do I want to experience freedom? I’ve thrown up a tent and camped in state parks and enjoyed being out in nature. I’ve slept in my car and enjoyed waking up in new places and not having to tear down a tent in the cold mornings. I’ve stayed in hotels and loved the big comfy bed and the little kitchenettes that allow me to cook. I’ve stayed on friends’ futons and enjoyed the free lodging and social life. What is the most harmonious expression of freedom that I’d like to experience? Let’s go out and try a lot of different things and see what they’re like!

Now I’m looking for a more permanent home to throw down some roots. It seems that this country really caters to those with a home and address. Where do I want to live? I can live in Denver, a big city with lots of different regions all over. I can live in Boulder which is a smaller town with a great spiritual vibe and amazing outdoorsy people. I can live up in a small mountain town like Nederland which gets a lot more snow and has more unplowed roads. Heck, I can even go live in a tipi on a sustainable farm! So many options! What do I want? What does my heart say?

Go dive into the unknown and follow that intuition… Let’s see where it takes me.

Spontaneity vs. Planning

What degree of structure do I want in my life? What works best? What feels best? What is most enjoyable? You can try going out somewhere in the world where you literally have NOTHING that you need to do. No plans. No nothing. Just show up and here you are. Where does your intuition lead you next? Completely and utterly spontaneous, allowing synchronicity to be everything.

Do you want a full schedule with lots of things to do and times to be at certain places?

Do you want to be generally open with only a few things scheduled to give your life some sense of  structure and direction while simultaneously being open to change direction on a dime?

I’m finding the last option to be most enjoyable for me. Complete and utter no plans doesn’t feel so good. I like having a next step to head towards in life and a few things on my to-do list. I like having an overall purpose for my life within which I allow the flow to occur. What do you like?

This is something that has been really valuable, to really let go and actually try out lots of different ways of being in the world and find what feels and works best for YOU. This is probably something that each person needs to find out for themselves…

Intuition

Intuition is SO bang on. It’s been my go-to option whenever it comes down to make a decision. Virtually every decision now is simply a matter of asking my intuition. What does this feel like? How does that option feel? Eventually you really start to develop the ability to discern between the feelings of expansiveness, openness, joy, excitement, and subtleness that usually comes with the intuition’s yes versus the sense of closure, downness, no, stopping, almost shut down that comes with the intuition’s no. Honestly one of the main challenges is getting the mind to align with the intuition. That’s really where the main challenge seems to lie, in getting the mind with all its logic and reasoning to surrender to a simple feeling that doesn’t explain itself.

Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction really works. I mean it REALLY works. I experience so consistently whatever it is that I most strongly think and believe deep down. It’s SO clear…

You are the light, mind is the prism, the world is your rainbow.
-Ash Ruiz

One thing I found amusing was to over and over hear people say “but this never happens!” It’s like everywhere I’d go, restaurants would hand me free food and beer, the weather would be perfect and just as I’d asked, things would just work out for me, and I’d just smile knowing that this has all been created within me and is being experienced due to my own inner alignment. At the same time, I only experience it to the degree that the alignment with inner being is maintained. It’s like a direct 1:1 relationship. Alignment with inner being, loving what is, non-resistance to the present moment, being in the vortex, being in a state of allowing, flowing the energy of Source through you, whatever you wanna call it… this one singular thing is what leads to the unfoldment of all that I desire in ways that are more amazing that I could have ever imagined had I been trying to micromanage or control any of this. It’s like having full creative power of choosing my vibrational state of being and simultaneously having no control over the physical world. The more I surrender control of the world and focus on inner alignment, the more the apparently outer world shows up in ways that reflect my inner alignment. This is really what the LoA is all about.

Happiness

This has been a pretty hard-hitting one for me. I really thought on some level that going out and jumping in to what I perceived to be a life of freedom and travel would bring happiness. It was subtle, but it was definitely here. This has been one false notion that’s been crashing down the past few days, and it’s been a tough pill to swallow. How many times have I thought that going out and “living the life of my dreams” would be what I was looking for? Wasn’t that what life was supposed to be about? It’s the idea that a certain lifestyle = happiness. Nope. Being out here in Colorado doesn’t make me happy. Heck, even manifesting all the stuff that I want doesn’t make me happy. Experiencing synchronicity and being in the flow itself doesn’t make me happy. It really doesn’t. I’m finding I keep placing conditions on my happiness and joy, as if something in life needs to be a certain way so that I can experience happiness and so I go about trying to structure my life a certain way. I keep placing these conditions on myself and finding that they keep come crashing down. They don’t work.

What I keep coming to find is that happiness DOES NOT lie outside of myself, as cliche as that may be. Happiness isn’t found in being loved. It isn’t found in living a certain lifestyle. It isn’t found in finally getting something you’ve always wanted. It doesn’t lie in mastery of a certain skill or achievement in a particular ability, including manifesting everything you want. Not at all…

The way it seems that it works is that happiness is found within, as if we ARE it. Literally. We find that we ARE it when we quit looking to FIND it. This inner being that is along for the journey every step of the way, this awareness that is ALWAYS present no matter how epic or traumatic the experience of life is, this presence that is always always always here, it’s so easy to get distracted from that and get lost in thought or lost in the world or lost in experiences, and yet this beingness is always here. When there’s a turning within, Love is found here. Joy is found here. Happiness is found here. Peace is found here.  Well-being is found here. It doesn’t matter where in the world I am or what is happening around me. It’s like this ground of being is becoming my home, silence is becoming my home, even if I don’t have a physical place to call home.

I wanted to write a book about the Law of Attraction, put together a workshop, collect videos that were especially helpful and so on, and yet what I’m starting to find is that mastery of manifesting DOES NOT BRING HAPPINESS. If I ever do come out with a product on the LoA, manifesting is going to be seen as sooooo secondary to being joyous, to being joy itself.

Byron Katie

The other day I was listening to Byron Katie and she said a number of things that completely blew me away…

Her whole thing is about questioning your thoughts and no longer believing in thought whatsoever, thereby ending your suffering. Her process to help us accomplish this she calls The Work and it’s repeatedly proving itself to be so effective and powerful…

She says that all suffering is a result of believing in thought. Period.  She mentioned that one thing she loves about life is that when someone else experiences pain, she doesn’t. When she experiences pain, the other doesn’t. We *think* that we suffer because of what another says or does, but the reality is we suffer because we believe thoughts that arise within us about what another said or did. If we didn’t believe any of our thoughts, experiences would simply happen and we wouldn’t suffer as a result of them. When you no longer believe in your thoughts, you are in heaven. When asked if she still feels like she’s in heaven even when bad things happen to her, she said she no longer perceives them as bad because she’s done the inquiry and doesn’t believe the thoughts that arise that suggest something is bad. She then went so far as to suggest that what if you went to heaven and took all your current thoughts with you. Would you then even experience heaven at all? The thing is you wouldn’t, and this is the condition most people are in. We all are in heaven right now, and yet we don’t experience it because we believe in our thoughts.

This is something that Adya has mentioned before as well, that he has literally lost the ability to believe in his own thoughts… I’ve wondered how this plays out in terms of the LoA which says that what you believe you experience… The two perspectives kinda seem at odds and this is a paradox that I have still only partially resolved for myself.

In any event, questioning my own thoughts repeatedly is bringing SO much valuable insight to me, so much clarity, and so much understanding. It’s a very useful technique…

So What Now?

There is SO much I don’t know. Everytime I think I know something, life gently and lovingly shows me how completely utterly wrong I am. There’s just so much more surrender to experience, a continual opening up to even deeper love (especially the scarier places), finding more areas of darkness and bringing the light into them, being happy and joyous for its own sake without any reason necessary, letting go of those fears and resistances and doubts and worries, and really just BEING. Being, loving, enjoying, surrendering…

Really I don’t know anything. Geez…

All I know is that here I am, sitting in a coffee shop, reflecting on the past few weeks of… good god… I don’t know how to describe it…

Whew… So yeah… If you’ve made it this far along and enjoyed what was shared, If you wanna read more from a wandering guy who has no idea what he’s doing half the time  :lol  feel free to donate some cash and help me pay for food and gas. It’s certainly appreciated!

Until next time, happy living!!

-Ariel

Wayne Dyer has recently come out with a film called The Shift which is centered around the topic of recognizing how the ego operates in us, living a life beyond what the ego wants, and being lived by this higher power.

He discusses a number of excellent topics and there are a number of other characters who go through a shift from selfish egoic consciousness to a more loving life of service. It’s really well done.

He brings up many things discussed by Lao Tzu, quotes Byron Katie and A Course in Miracles, and really demonstrates what it’s like to live a life of service, appreciation, respect, and gentleness. I’ve never really looked into his stuff very much, but I really respect and enjoy what he did with this film.

One of the things that was really cool was that he discusses how this transformation of going beyond pure ego shifts in both men and women. For example, men are very success and achievement oriented in our society and the shift has them being more interested in spirituality and honesty than in trying to get respect and all. Women, on the other hand, are often taught by society to look pretty and devote themselves to others. After their shift, women often learn to appreciate and live for themselves instead of trying to please others. It’s discused in a bit more detail of course, but it was fascinating to see how drastically these shifts occur between the two sexes.

Another thing which was awesome was that it discussed spirituality in a very practical way. How parents can relate to their children, how to respond in relationships from an egoic point of view versus from something deeper, how to follow your passions and find your purpose in life, the importance of giving and how that plays out with respect to being lived by this higher power instead of trying to control life, and so on.

Really, very well done.

Great job to Wayne and the crew involved in the creation of the film!

The trailer I’ve posted below and the actual movie can be found online at Amazon.

Validating All That Is

As I look out into this world, I see a number of things happening:

• People are awakening to recognize the underlying interconnectedness and unity of life.
• People are becoming more energetically sensitive to the emotions of others and intuitively aware of one another. Thus it’s becoming easier to “read people.” Our thoughts and energies are not as private as we may think.
• People often find themselves experiencing similar sorts of experiences as others, as if we’re all on the same page and going through many of the same experiences.
• With the advent of sites like facebook and twitter, not to mention the internet itself, information is becoming much more public and available.
• There is a call for greater transparency in our governments and corporations so that any shady stuff has to come to light.
• The more we awaken, quite literally the harder it is to lie. It’s as if we experience a physical contraction of energy, like we have to make our energy more dense in order to lie, and this is very unpleasant. It just feels off… way off.

As we become lighter and lighter, we begin experiencing our bodies as less physical and more as pure light. Quite literally. It’s really cool… It’s as if we actually have light bodies, as if the physical becomes more and more clearly just light appearing as clumps of physicalized matter.

In this light, you find some energies happen to be compatible while others are not. Energies that vibrate in harmony with light include those that are open and pure, honest and real. The energy of lies and deception simply has no place in the light.

Truth, Joy, Love and Light. That’s it.

If People Told the Truth…

Imagine a world where people tell each other “The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth” at all times. There’s even a book called Radical Honesty which talks about living a life of being absolutely and utterly honest.

Oh also, check out this movie trailer of the recently released movie called “The Invention of Lying.”

The point of the movie isn’t quite the same as what this post is getting across, but it does illustrated many of our fears about people being honest. As people heal their energies in “real life” and step into the light, what would that be like? Well a few examples include:

• People would be honest and upfront, yet not avoid the truth in order to dance around someone’s ego.
• People’s egos would get pinged as they hear others saying things that they don’t want to hear, certainly. Yet the more they’re willing to be honest with themselves (which is the real key here) about these issues that are coming up and thus facing them directly with awareness, the more they’d be able to finally heal those dark energies within (after who knows how many lifetimes) and progress even more towards the light, snowballing the process.
• As people step more into the light, they’ll be able to speak their truths more kindly and lovingly. The truth doesn’t have to be a harsh finger-pointing thing. It can be a very loving and healing energy when harnessed from a place of love and light, such as being a way for people to express what they’re grateful for and what they love about themselves and others.
• The more people heal themselves, the more incompatible energies such as child slave labor, the poisoning of our food, and so on would come to light and people could respond from a place of actually knowing what’s up, not from a limited perspective of not knowing what’s really going on and being fed propaganda instead. Now people can make new choices about who they choose to be and what they accept in the world from a place of light rather than from a place of fear.
• The legal system would radically shift (if it would even still be necessary in some form) as people would actually be honest when asked a question.
• People would learn to stop blaming one another for what happens to them in life and realize that they are responsible for creating their realities. The more you step into the light, the more the laws of the universe such as the law of attraction and the unity of all life become intuitively clear. From this place of expanded awareness, even greater change could occur in the lives of these people.

What exactly all the changes would be, no one really knows for sure. I’m sure you can come up with many excellent ideas as well. One thing that is being seen at this point is that there is more and more light coming onto this planet through us. More light means more of that which hides in the shadows being revealed. We may see scary things in the process, but this actually contributes to our healing, especially as we choose to stay in the light even in life’s scary moments.

Enjoying the Transparent Life

As we become more light, there is a call for greater transparency. Be real. Be honest. Be sincere. Be authentic. Let go. Let it flow. Relax. Play. Lighten up. Have fun. Enjoy yourself. Take it easy. Be passionate. Be creative. Live the life of your dreams.

Suggestions and pointers can be very useful, but we may eventually outgrow them. Teachings are helpful up to a certain point, but we must eventually let them go or else they will become limitations. It’s almost like sitting in a big slingshot. The slingshot will sling you forward, but if you continue holding on for too long, what once propelled you forward will eventually hold you back.

Enjoying the World

For example, one such teaching that I’m finding that it’s time to let go of is, “It is the ego which seeks to be constantly entertained. It does so as a substitute for the truth of your being, as a distraction. The world and its appearances are a distraction from going within. All the happiness you find in the world does nothing but strengthen your ego, furthering the illusion that your joy comes from the world. It’s more important to turn within than to focus on the world outside of you. You’ll never find that which you seek by looking to the world. Straight and narrow is the path. Waste no time.”

We could say that, especially in the beginning, the ego functions as a sort of emotional gatekeeper, as if it literally “lets happiness in” when certain external conditions are met and certain things “make me happy.” This is not true. The happiness comes from within and there is an infinite supply of it.

This teaching when misunderstood, ahem…, can be used to conclude that happiness from the world = bad. Imagine that… you get into something hoping to end your suffering, only to adopt a new (apparently “more spiritual”) belief system that has you avoiding everything you find joyful in the world! That’s messed up…

If you also have the belief system, “Life is scary and I’m terrified of it so I’m gonna run into my cave and transcend fear altogether by getting enlightened,” well than this way of avoiding the world actually becomes useful.

Causeless Happiness

Learning that our happiness isn’t literally derived from external conditions (which is true), we begin disassociating the cause of our happiness from external conditions, finding that we can be happy no matter what is happening outside of us. We find a wellspring of happiness that bubbles up from the I AM without cause. We only need to let go of resisting it to experience it. This is a great discovery. We find we’re no longer dependent upon external situations being a certain way in order to find joy like some sort of druggie. We’re no longer addicted to our sources of entertainment as if our joy depended upon it and thus those attachments progressively fall away.

Once we free our joy from the world, we’re free to experience it in the world as much as we want.

We begin finding the always available joy within and, interestingly enough, noticing that it has a natural tendency of wanting to express itself in life. Joy naturally wants to be expressed. Once we discover this, we’re free to reengage with our previous activities which we had previously been detaching from. We no longer need to do certain things and in this there is freedom.

Now we find ourselves inspired and guided from within to move in a particular direction. Instead of trying to derive joy from activities, we find that our inner joy harmonizes with certain activities quite naturally and thus we do those activities as an expression of inner joy. We bring the joy to the world. We live as a source of joy, as joy itself in human form.

This energy needs to flow out into the world. It’s part of “bringing heaven down to earth” you could say, of grounding the higher chakra energy down into your lower chakras. Simply pooling the love and light up within yourself and blissing out in meditation is sort of the spiritual equivalent of masturbation. Stripped of societal judgment, masturbation is basically a way to give yourself pleasure and that’s a wonderful thing and I’m all for it, but maybe it’s possible that there’s something more to life than that…

It’s okay to play. It’s great to have fun. It is good to feel good. There’s a reason the Buddha is often depicted with a smile on his face.

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?

So, enlightenment. Two of its main selling points (heh) are the end of suffering and the recognition that all is one.

Yet what I’ve found in my own experience as well as in speaking with others is that it’s possible to be in a state of Oneness while simultaneously experiencing suffering. Wait… what?

It was really confusing to see this and somewhat disheartening to be honest, as if the whole enlightenment thing ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Clearly there’s something off with this whole Oneness thing!

Sage Sarojini recently started up a blog and in it she addresses several of the difference between Oneness and Realization. Check out her explanation for more information. In her post she differentiates between the two and points out that the fear of ‘Nothingness’ is often the barrier between Oneness and Realization. This fear I will be addressing in the next blog post.

Until then, I’d just like to bring up the idea that there’s more to this journey than seeing that “we are all one.”

Let’s talk about some of the main differences between the awake state and the asleep state as well as address two traps that keep one falling back into (the experience of) separation.

Awareness: Awake vs. Asleep

Asleep, awareness seems to be no big deal. You can be aware of awareness, but it seems like just another thing to look at like the floor or your thoughts. Nothing special really.

Awake, awareness is seen to be what you are, not as an identity like a parent or child, but as pure presence. Some say Presence prior to name and form, but this exists outside of time entirely, yet not separate from it. This aware presence is expansive, spacious, boundless, unchanging, and free. That which is seen by awareness is intuitively recognized to be not other than awareness and not separate from it.

Awakening is simply a movement of Consciousness. It is a moving away from the identification of being a separate one to the recognition that all of life is a flowering in Consciousness being revealed.

-Cathy Rosewell Jonas

It’s possible to have the experience of vacillating between awake and asleep, something which Adyashanti refers to as a non-abiding awakening. Through simple trial and error and life experience, I’ve found there to be a number of ways to send yourself back into a state of egoic delusion. Here are two such examples:

Owning and Personalizing an Awakening Experience

“I had a spiritual awakening experience.”

While this sounds totally logical to the mind, by trying to take ownership of an awakening or claiming to be the one who experienced it, a personal self gets recreated and that very energy of dividing life into an experience and an experiencer sends one back into the world of separation. It’s like you can allow water to rest in the palm of your hand, but as soon as you try and grasp onto it, it all flows out. It seems that spiritual experiences are something that we must learn to allow to be here as they are and not hold on to or claim as “mine.” This is something that comes naturally with the maturation of awakening, not something necessarily that needs to be forced.

In Reality, all experiences simply arise in the moment. Without a separate experiencer, experiences are experienced with incredible intimacy, for there literally is no separation from or avoidance of the experience. Just pure experiencing within consciousness.

From the perspective of a separate self, things are taken personally and there is a sense of distance from the experience. When we are in love, we try and close that gap. When we go into fear, we try and widen this gap. This is why lovers come together and people may try to run away from their problems. There is a perceived sense of separation between “me” and “what I’m experiencing.”

WHO is experiencing is a very valuable question…

Clinging to an Experience

“I want to maintain this experience.”

Back to good ‘ole attachment and clinging.

The experience of awakening (which can come and go) is actually not the same thing as awakeness itself (which is eternal and literally here right now no matter how awake or asleep you are.)

The mind has a tendency of seeking the first while overlooking the second which is putting the cart before the horse. When the ego arises to create and/or maintain something that can be lost, it’s focusing upon that which is bound in time and thus not resting in the eternal and the permanent. It’s seeking to make the impermanent permanent rather than recognizing that which is already permanent and thus can’t be lost and doesn’t need to be maintained.

While logically it would make sense that one would want to maintain a pleasurable experience, the way that experience is maintained is ironically by allowing the Self (and the experience as well) to fully be as it IS. In the same way as you let the air all around you to be as it is, the One must also be allowed to be as it is. Don’t try and grasp the air. Don’t try and grasp the Self. Don’t try and grasp the experience. No grasping. Allow it all to be as it is.

Adyashanti Elaborates

Adyashanti has a program titled The End of Your World which focuses upon non-abiding awakenings and some of the traps I’ve listed above. It’s one of my absolute favorites. Below is a pair of youtube clips, excerpts from the aforementioned program where he discusses these two traps and goes into more detail.

One of the hardest things for some egos to accept is that they may be wrong, that what they strongly believe or the way they perceive things to be may not actually be the way things really are. As it turns out, there is tremendous freedom in allowing yourself to be wrong, and in fact that willingness allows something deeper to awaken, something that simply knows and exists outside the game of right and wrong entirely.

Below is a video post I recently created on the topic of being wrong.

Note: I’ve set it to play in HD quality by default, so for those of you who are on a low-bandwidth connection, when you hit the play button, fiddle with the HD button and make sure it’s black (off) so that you download the faster and lower quality version. (If you could let me know in the comments what you did to play the low quality version, that’d be awesome. You may need to turn it on and off. Thank you.)

For those of you who prefer reading, let’s summarize what was covered in the video here.

Smart People Take Note

For those people who’ve grown up being told “you’re so smart” and derive a sense of self-worth from how much they know and what they understand, there may be an association between being right and self-worth. Thus, it may be harder for smart people to say “I don’t know” or “I was wrong.”

For example, growing up I really liked getting things right. When someone would ask me something, it really boosted my self-esteem to know something. When someone would ask me something I didn’t know, instead of saying “I don’t know,” I’d make up an answer that was completely absurd, something that was obviously wrong and off the mark. For example, even something as simple as “What time is it?” If I didn’t know, I might say something like 25 o’clock. It was a fun way to basically get admitting that I didn’t know something, which to my ego was perceived to be a tremendous blow.

There’s a saying I really like… “I’m not young enough to know everything.”

Misperceiving What Is

How many times have you seen someone misinterpret or misunderstand someone else? One person says one thing, but the other person actually understands something else entirely.

Quick and easy example: “I love you.” That statement can mean a hundred different things. A thousand. It’s so easy to think a person is saying one thing when really they’re saying another.

Growing and Learning

Have you noticed that as you develop over the course of your life and you learn new things, your perspective of the world changes?

There’s another saying I really like… “Show me a person who believes the same thing their entire life and I’ll show you a person who’s learned nothing.”

As we develop and evolve, very often our understanding of reality changes and what we used to perceive to be “the truth” is later seen to be maybe part of the truth or perhaps completely false entirely. Seeing that what you have said before can be very scary, particularly for teachers and educators, or for anyone who bases their life on a certain set of rigidized teachings.

Eventually we may see beyond the limits of our previous understandings, and this is a natural part of the process.

What Then of Our “Old” Understandings?

Something I’ve seen with some authors is that they’ll write a book during their own personal transformation. The book is awesome and useful and very helpful. Yet what may happen by the end of the book is that the person who started writing the book is not the same person who finished the book. They transform so much that the energies that are discussed in the book may no longer even be present within them. They’re no longer “in it” but beyond it.

Quick example. Let’s say a person writes a book on forgiveness, on how merciful and forgiving God is and how we can develop our abilities to forgive as well. Then the author later comes to the realization that if nothing wrong could ever happen and that God could never actually be hurt and thus feel that He has been wronged, what then is there to forgive? If forgiveness was never actually necessary in the first place, is the book on forgiveness still applicable? On one level, yep. On another level, not anymore.

It Ain’t So Black and White

Instead of seeing truth as a right and wrong thing, a better model may be that of rungs on a ladder. Certain things may be up above you on a higher rung on a ladder. You climb and eventually get there and stabilize on that rung, only to later keep climbing and leave that rung behind altogether. That rung and the lessons you learned there may no longer be appropriate for you now, but those lessons may be appropriate for many others.

Thus, even if we outgrow a certain realization or understanding, it may nevertheless be useful for others if they’re on that level now.

This has been interesting for me looking back over some of my old blog posts and see that I’ve grown since I started writing posts here 2 years ago. Some of what I’ve written before, I can now see beyond where I was then and see that where I was then and, well, it’s not necessarily that I was completely wrong by any means, but it was just that I was only seeing a small part of the bigger picture. If I were to talk about a subject today, I would likely approach the topic differently and explain things in a new (and hopefully better) way. In fact, I may even mention that what I am seeing today I may negate tomorrow. I may realize something tomorrow that will completely turn all my current understandings on their ear. There’s a sense of flexibility and non-attachment here now. Freedom.

So yeah, we grow, we develop, we expand our awareness and understandings, and as a result what we say may contradict something we’ve said in the past. Oh well!

Often times other people can be the source of so much of our suffering. This can include friends, family members, celebrities, or even just random strangers. Like many other things in the world, sometimes people just really piss us off. This is a common experience for many people in life.

Making Your Happiness Unconditional

We have this idea that if someone else were to only change their behavior then we’d finally be happy, and this is true given that we’d then be focusing our attention upon something we do like and thus no longer offering resistance to what we see (and therefore not suffering), but this is actually tremendously giving your power away because it’s saying that your happiness and well-being is completely dependent upon another person’s behavior. You basically give someone else the keys to your happiness. Yikes! When we do this, it only makes us want to try and control the other because, well, our happiness quite literally depends on it!

We may try to play this game with a few people around us and it may work to a limited extent, but if we make this a way of life, this is really just not a healthy way to live, you know? It’s just not realistic or healthy to think that the whole world is going to do what you want.

Now this isn’t meant to excuse other people’s behaviors. Not at all. There are so many examples of unconscious behavior out there we can point out. Of course that’s there. What we’re talking about here is releasing ourselves from the suffering that we create for ourselves as a result of the unconscious behavior that occurs all around us. We want to release ourselves from our own self-imposed prison, regardless of what’s happening in the world.

This is about making our happiness and well-being unconditional. Literally. It’s taking down the conditions we have imposed upon ourselves for whatever reason and finding that freedom we so desperately seek.

It’s about changing ourselves and allowing others to change (or not) out of our/their own volition, not because of attacking or being attacked.

Let’s listen to a wonderful Abraham-Hicks talk that gives a hilarious example of this and takes a look at how we can allow ourselves to be in this world and have healthy experiences in our relationships without letting the little things in life tear us apart.

Closing The Gap

Have you noticed that the reason we suffer is only only only because of the story we are telling ourselves in our head, and even more importantly, our belief in our story as if it was actually true. That’s it! The negative emotions are showing us that our story (thoughts) about life has nothing to do with the reality. It’s not true. That’s why it feels so bad.

Most of us are familiar with practices like focusing on the positive aspects, loving what is, being present, being in the now, surrendering, and all the other wonderful stuff, and yet nevertheless there seems to be this gap between what we “know” on one level and how we live, as if this knowingness has yet to penetrate the totality of our being. We all have this gap and one of the games of the spiritual journey is closing this gap. It’s really LIVING from the truth of your being, living what your heart knows to be true. Your life becomes a living manifestation of your inner being.

From this space you can still make changes in your life, like getting a second tube of toothpaste as mentioned in the video, for example.

Loving what is doesn’t mean that you don’t do anything about life. Not at all. Actually, it’s not about doing or not doing. Loving what is simply means to truly love what IS and then FROM that space, you live your life, however it naturally arises. It means to live from the love rather than let the ego run the show.

How this love manifests may be laughing things off, making a compromise, expressing more gratitude, changing certain things, talking about your issues, or perhaps even leaving the relationship. Who knows? There’s countless possible responses. It’s not really a “if this then that” thing. It’s more spontaneous and part of the flow.

But the whole “demanding that a person be different than they are or else you will withhold your love/acceptance/approval of them,” yeah, not so much…

Transcending Life vs. Facing Life

Some people may also have this idea that when we have problems in our lives, all we have to do is simply raise our level of consciousness to the point where they no longer bug us and then we’ll magically fix our lives. Yet this can actually become a subtle form of escapism and avoidance.

Instead of actually facing life, facing what’s being shown to you in the mirror of life, we may try and spiritualize ourselves beyond our current experience.

Yet the interesting thing is that if we can face what life is showing us with sincerity and without turning away, life itself becomes the catalyst to our greatest transformations. It’s all right here, ready for us. As is often said, life is our greatest teacher.