Announcing! A New Travel Blog!!

http://www.ArielBravy.com/travel

Canyon Overlook at Zion NP, UT

If you let go of all of the things you do out of a sense of obligation and necessity, if you could experience yourself being totally and completely supported as you do the things your heart is calling you to do, what would you imagine that would look like? How would that feel?

For the past 4 months or so, I’ve been stepping into this state of being as best as I can, and my heart has been guiding me to travel and really embrace and love all that arises in life.

As such I’ve started created a new blog dedicated to travel and experiencing what life can be like when follow your passion as best you can, listen to your heart, and allow yourself to be guided by your intuition. The site is now up at ArielBravy.com/travel and it’s replacing my 5 year running photoblog. (You’ll find years worth of pictures on the photoblog and only the more recent stuff thus far on the travel blog.) To give you a preview of what’s there, here’s a few pictures.

Nothing that you’ll see here was planned from the get-go. When the fire was lit to go LIVE, these are but a few of the spontaneous manifestations that naturally arose and practically fell into my lap. Life can be really amazing when we quit trying to force it and allow it to show up on its own terms, as we fully align with the universe’s natural subtle currents and flows!

Tent Camping along the Coast of Malibu, CA

STS-131 Space Shuttle Discovery Lifting Off from Cape Canaveral, FL

Orange groves outside of J. Krishnamurti's home in Ojai, CA

Admiring Inspiration Point at Bryce Canyon, UT

Learning to Self-Arrest with Ice Axe on St. Marys Glacier, CO

I’ve been flying solo for the most part the past few months, but traveling with others looks like a lot of fun as well!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=npawmHVaf-E

Really, there’s SO MANY ways of experiencing life!

One thing you I’ve come to discover on journeys like this is that, ironically, it doesn’t matter WHERE you are. (Even though the places are awesome!) What really matters is HOW you’re living your life, and HOW you live is something that you can choose to embody ANYWHERE. ie. It’s not about finding happiness in life through traveling, but allowing the happiness to show up in life though your travels, expressed as your life.

Spending Time in Silence

At this time, my guidance is directing me to take a break from life’s epic outer adventures and to go spend some time in silence, and so I’m taking a break from the whole online thing.

In the meantime, have you considered how much more happiness, passion, joy, and love you have the capacity to bring forth into your own life? What gifts do you have within yourself to bring forth? How much more of your own light do you have to share and experience?

http://www.ArielBravy.com/travel

When I was 5 years old my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.

-Unknown

Okay, so what drives human decisions? In a nutshell, we tend to move towards what we believe will bring us pleasure and away from what we believe what will bring us pain. It’s about our beliefs.

It’s not that we move directly towards pleasure itself and away from pain. I’m sure you can find many examples in the world, and perhaps even in your own life, when you have moved away from pleasure and towards pain. Interesting, no? Why would we do such a thing? It’s because on a deeper level, beyond surface-level appearances, we are moving towards what we believe will bring that which feels good and away from what we believe will ultimately make us feel worse. Much of this is subconscious.

So why do we do those things that we “know” aren’t good for us? For example, why do we resist reality? Why do we try to control others or the world? Why do we try and manifest things? Heck, why do we try and get enlightened!? Why do we do all this stuff?

Simple, because we believe that our happiness and well-being depends upon it! Quite literally! In the end, we all want to feel good. We all want to be happy, to experience joy, to love and be loved, to experience all those good feelings and emotions.

So, joy. We’re seeking joy. We want to be happy. It’s pretty simple, really.

Yet this joy we’re seeking is conditional. We experience our happiness dependent upon things out of our control, and that doesn’t feel very good, does it?

What if there was a better way?…

Seeking Joy

So as little kids, we’re happy when we get rewarded, when we get treats. When someone approves of us we feel good and so then associate happiness with approval and validation. When we’re scared and we get our blanket, we feel more secure, and so we think that our security lies in a “security blanket.” As adults this same pattern remains with us, though the security blanket itself may change, whether it comes in the form of money, a dependable spouse, a big house, etc.

Then we may begin discovering that, hey wait a second, we can be happy even without those things. We can feel safe and loved even without our security blankets.

If our happiness depends on an external circumstance, person, or thing, then our happiness is vulnerable. What can be gained can also be lost. We will often do everything in our power to maintain our happiness, but very often we find that we simply can’t control the world enough to maintain our happiness. It’s like the world is stronger than we are.

Seeing this and not wanting to be so helplessly at the effect of the world, we begin learning to let go, surrender, and release our attachments. The whole “spiritual pathway” thing. There are many helpful tools and techniques that can help us in this stage. They are very valuable and can bring us closer and closer to the freedom and joy that is already HERE.

Eventually we begin reaching the point where our tools have done their part and we can begin letting even them go too. If you hurt your leg, a crutch is a very useful tool to help you out until you your leg is strong enough for you to put your weight back on it and walk on it. But if we cling onto our crutch for, what was originally intended to help us out eventually becomes a limitation itself! Why do you think they call it a crutch!?

Many of our spiritual tools are designed to help us go beyond the experience of “my happiness depends upon XYZ.” Be careful that application of your tool doesn’t itself become the next apparent source/cause of happiness or else you have simply traded one condition for your happiness for another.

The tool is never the point. The tool itself is not even what is important. Finger pointing to the moon. It is a stepping stone towards something greater until it is no longer needed. It is something that we must let go of, yet this can be very hard for people to do. It’s scary to let go of your crutches at first and then walk and even run freely! But there is a point when we MUST let go of all our tools in order to go beyond.

A tool is not the source of happiness. A truly helpful tool assists us in finding the happiness already within us so that we no longer need the tool anymore! So this isn’t to invalidate the usefulness of any tool, far from it. It’s simply about put them in their appropriate context.

Tools help us become more loving, more spiritual, more conscious, more forgiving, and all that jazz. Yet simultaneously there is also the presence of that which IS, which isn’t affected by any tools, which doesn’t become more of anything or less of anything. All tools exist within this, but none of them can touch or change this.

The Source of Joy

The quality of inner silence and presence remains like a subtle energy inside this body. Each time you turn your attention in this way, you will notice this beautiful peaceful energy. Get used to it and gradually this current of joy and peace will remain unbroken in you.”

-Mooji

The more we let go, the more we find this natural sense of happiness, joy, and peace arising all on its own without us having to really do anything deliberately. I call this arising natural because it is uncaused, unforced, uncreated, unmanifested, and unfiltered. It’s pure and untouched, just as it is.

There is this ground of being, the felt sense “I Am”, one’s very own existence, Life itself manifesting as an apparent person. It is this unchanging constant silent presence that is the true source of joy, that IS Joy itself.

To BE is itself already a huge gift. When we live in the domain of the mind, there is a vacillation between “life is good” and “life sucks” and we tend to do whatever we think’ll make us feel better, but very often what we think will work doesn’t, hence the saying “be careful what you wish for” (because you just may get it and realize that it doesn’t actually give you what you wanted fundamentally… happiness and joy)

The more the mind and all its conceptual spinnings can be free to just fall away on their own in their own time, the more this ground of being can move from the background into the forefront of conscious awareness.

“This realization is such a profound shift, in that, one realizes the identity of self to naturally be awareness itself, and not the ideas or images arising in awareness. It is in this presence, that the reality of life unfolds. Therefore, there is only the witnessing of what comes and goes, that ever happens to exist — and you are that.”

-Matt Kahn

Causeless Joy

When we think that joy is a result, that it has a cause which comes as a result of some accomplishment or attainment, then we will seek to maintain this temporary event as long as possible, or to keep creating and recreating it, lest we lose that which we want. No! Anything but that!

Yet when we go deep enough within and discover for ourselves the presence of the ground of Being and what it depends on (if anything) in order for joy to be present, the more we can stop imposing all these unnecessary and artificial conditions upon our happiness and just BE. We discover that somehow, this itself is entirely sufficient. The quality and nature of Being may itself inspire positive emotion, yet it itself is somehow beyond emotional condition and thus it is free of the emotional pendulum swing. The presence of Being is NOT lost when you feel bad and so emotions need not be feared as if they cover this up.

Yes thoughts are inseparably tied to emotion, but what we are pointing to here goes beyond emotion.

“The truth is already itself, and you are that truth. If you are looking for truth, and attempting to find it somewhere else, or through a process of becoming someone else, you are unclear about what truth actually is; lost in the dream of a well-organized thinker, adrift in a sea of endless spiritual ideas.”

-Matt Kahn

The Law of Attraction

I’d like to wrap up with a little bit on the law of attraction here. From the place of seeking joy as a caused result, why would we want to manifest something? Because we see manifestation as an integral part of the cause of joy! Because we love the excitement of thinking about and anticipating the arrival of that which we want, because we love the experience of the creative process unfolding before our eyes, we enjoy the synchronicities along the way, and we are happy that we have creative control over our reality.

It feels great to “be in the vortex” as Abraham puts it, but when we start thinking and believing in thought that is out of alignment with reality, then we experience the response called negative motion.

As such, our happiness is still experienced to be conditional. It’s dependent upon thinking positive thoughts, allowing yourself to go with the flow, and so on. This is how we tend to experience life, is it not?

Yet what I’m finding is that when you start releasing these conditions upon your happiness, positive thoughts begin to happen on their own, when thoughts do arise in the first place, that is. The mind begins to quiet down naturally, yet thoughts do continue to arise, although they are taken less seriously and are not seen to be as much of a problem anymore. In the presence of Being, somehow you just don’t even believe these thoughts that keep passing by! They’re not being followed the way they once were, and they’re certainly not seen to contain more importance and weight than the presence of Being!

Going with the flow itself becomes a natural way of being in the world. Unconditional love and appreciation for all of life, including this mind/body/personality/history/energy blob we call “me,” somehow arises all on its own, all without us having to think our way to happiness. The happiness is somehow found to already be here! These things are our natural state when we stop placing conditions upon our happiness and joy. Our cork rises naturally when we quit resisting so damn hard! You don’t “raise your vibration.” Just quit resisting and it raises itself!!

and speaking of the LoA, here’s the ironic/amazing thing about how it ties into all this causeless joy stuff… The more we quit trying to control our realities and manifest stuff in order to create happiness and instead we let go and let go of that condition, the more we quit waiting for the manifestation of that which we want in order to experience joy and the more we begin experiencing that desired happiness and joy NOW. Woohoo! The more we begin experiencing that appreciation and unconditional love NOW. Sweet!

The more we quit making our happiness, joy, appreciation, and love conditional upon the world, since the world is basically our mirror, it has no choice but to reflect all that back to us!

What is it that Abraham keeps saying is the most important thing? “There is nothing more important than that you feel good.” The more we quit trying to “make this all happen” and just be happy now for its own sake, the more all the stuff that we want starts to effortlessly flow into our lives. Well gee, that was easy! The more we quit holding on to and defending our old and familiar patterns of egoic resistance, the more we can just relax into this timeless ground of Being without waiting for some ideal time in the future or thinking that it existed in some past moment or experience which we now need to recreate.

“Why are you happy?”

“No reason at all!”

Causeless joy, this joy within that is at the heart of what you are, here it is! And it has no cause!

P.S. Thanks to my facebook buddies for passing along such wonderful quotes used above.

Okay, so just a little jibber jabbering. I figured this whole “go out and live the life of your dreams” thing was gonna be a big epic adventure, and in a way it is, but honestly that seems to be a bit idealistic. People keep saying “Oh man! That’s so amazing what you’re doing! It looks so cool and so fun!” and yeah, I suppose it looks that way from the outside. At times it is, for sure, but perhaps the best word I can think of to describe it is RAW.

It’s not so much about experiencing life as I’m finding out, but experiencing YOURSELF. It’s basically about coming out of hiding and being more honest with myself and authentic than I’ve ever been…

Hypocrisy

It’s so funny to just watch this stuff happen. For example, I’m watching myself become a huge hypocrite. Things that I’ve given people crap about before I now watch myself do. It’s SO true that what you resist persists. I remember saying, “Oh, you don’t have to go meditate on a mountain to find God. You can find him anywhere! He’s everywhere!” and then I go march off to a mountaintop. In so doing, I’m  actually starting to see WHY people go do such a thing. There’s a reason that many spiritual places like Tibet are at elevation… there’s something special about the altitude and what it does to the human body. The silence and the intimacy with nature is pretty fantastic as well, for sure.

After it Manifests, So What?

Both my desires and my fears are manifesting like crazy and in the middle I’m finding that a) the experience of what I desired isn’t all they’re cracked up to be and b) the experience of what I feared isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. It’s like the extremes between the joy of desire and the fear of fear are starting to come closer together and I’m starting to find the happy medium in the middle as being more valuable than the polar opposites of what I want and what I don’t want.

Is it still a manifestation of victim consciousness to sit back and not take creative “control” of your state of being? Maybe. I dunno. Learning to allow is a BIG part of the equation as well. It’s not all about controlling every step of the process, which seems to be a big misunderstanding about the LoA.

How Much Do You REALLY Know?

This experience seems to be about embodying that which I have learned or have realized. I’m seeing the extent to which I’ve been bullshitting myself, how much I thought that I got that I really don’t. Yeah, when you see that and you stop running, whew boy…

When you get the ego hits, it really helps to again disidentify from it. When you feel it’s YOU that slipped and fell flat on his face, when your follies and mistakes are taken personally, it’s a tough pill to swallow. When you can step back as awareness and see that it’s just egoic conditioning that’s being brought to the light of awareness and that it’s not YOU you’re seeing, it makes it SO much easier to let go and release.

YOU have never made a mistake. YOU have never really done anything in your life. You only think you do…

Coming Face to Face with Emotions

Matt Kahn just posted an excellent bit on facebook called The Truth about Feelings. (I think you have to be a facebook member to read that link. Not sure if you have to be his friend too.) In that article, he points out the difference between experiencing feelings directly versus experiencing what you think about the feeling. BIG DIFFERENCE. As he describes, it’s like being a child who’s curious as to what it’s like to experience a feeling and feel what it’s like without all the preconceived notions and judgments as to what is good, bad, acceptable, unacceptable, or otherwise. It’s a far more pure and defenseless experience.

The past day or so I’ve been experiencing this sort of knot in my stomach and have been spending time just feeling it without trying to change it or do anything about it at all. Just really EXPERIENCE LIFE and all that is arising as it is in this moment. One could say, “Why would you sit there feeling bad when you can just reach for a better feeling thought and feel better now?” and this is a question I have been asking myself as well. My response to that excellent question is that there seems to be a difference between having your mind take the lead and having your heart and soul take the lead. When your whole life is based around reaching for better feeling thoughts, life becomes very mental, and to be honest I’m already overly mental… What I’ve discovered is that when you go within and connect to your heart and soul, they are MUCH better guides than the mind ever could be AND the energy of your light starts to penetrate into your mind and transform it. Then your thoughts take their cue from your inner being, rather than your mind constantly trying to be the one in charge. I’m certainly not a master at this yet by any means, but I definitely prefer this path right now.

More “Pieces” to Non-abiding Awakenings

Speaking of links to share, Sarojini recently posted a fantastic article on The Stages of Awakening. I’ve seen a number of teachers post such descriptions before, but this is perhaps the description I’ve read in that REALLY matches what I’ve experienced and what I’ve seen in others. What others have written may certainly be valid in their own experience, but this is what’s been the case here.

Peace

Yeah, it’s been very chaotic lately. Perhaps you can tell. I’ve found it very challenging lately to simply sit down and SHUT UP. It’s very rewarding when I can for short periods of time and I know it’s necessary, but that’s one of the big dust storms my own ego has been kicking up lately. Alright, time to go turn the computer off, be quiet, and sit with all this swirling stuff within and face even more of my own stuff for myself, for my own sake. I could use some silence and stillness right now, even if all the action and opportunities sound much more enticing to my ego…

Buh bye now!

Okay, first of all a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who donated the past few days. I am tremendously grateful to each and every one of you and I’d like you to know that yes, your gift makes a big difference. Not only that, it’s been really cool to hear some of the stories that have come forth after donating. For example, one reader/friend donated to me and also wanted to get a new pair of dance shoes. She then shared with me that the very next day, her dance teacher flat out gave her exactly the dance shoes she wanted and wouldn’t let her pay for them. Get this… the cost of the dance shoes was exactly the amount she’d donated! It’s really cool to see this flow of giving and receiving, how it works in both directions, and it’s on this note that I’d like to begin this post.

It seems like a big part of “being in the flow” is not only being open to receiving abundant blessings from the universe, from other people, and from every which way, but also being open to give what you have to offer. It’s important for both ends of the giving/receiving pipe be open for the best experience of flow. Now by giving, this doesn’t necessarily imply giving physical stuff like money or your possessions, although that’s certainly just as much a part of it as anything else. Less tangible things like a helping hand, a kind smile, an encouraging word, or even your time… these things can all be HUGE gifts… It seems like the greatest gift you can give is the gift of yourself in whatever form you show up. I don’t mean to make this sound like “I’m all that” or “I’m God’s gift to humanity” in an egotistical sense or any of that nonsense, but it seems like when you just naturally show up and shine your light, that seems to impact people more than anything you could possibly do by trying to give for whatever reason. It’s pretty surprising to me still to see over and over that life, for whatever reason, simply works best when I just give up trying to manifest this or make that happen or get this person to respond that way or any of that effort-based stuff… When I say “enough already” and just be myself and enjoy and appreciate what I already DO have, life is FAR more enjoyable, new things and people show up much more easily, and everything just works BETTER.

Since I’m enjoying just being myself more and more these days as opposed to trying to deliberately play the role of teacher or student as if this was all so serious :lol , let’s have a little fun here. Let’s tell a little story today… and since we’re playing like children, let’s make this story like a picture book. How ’bout that?

Off to the Mountains!

Okay, so the weather forecast this week called for sunny and clear skies up in the mountains, so I headed to the local REI to talk to people about places to go camping. Sure enough, I stumbled right into a couple talking to a guy about this exact thing, so I mozied right on in to the conversation. Synchronicity, you rock! The guy suggested two different places, one of which intuitively lit up more for me than the other. After picking up a detailed map of the area, I hopped into the car and started driving. The trail I was going to visit was actually a snowshoe trail and I don’t own a pair of showshoes yet, but the intuition said go anyways so off I went regardless!

There’s a road that heads up into the mountains through a canyon from Boulder to Nederland. You gain about 3,000 feet of elevation here. At the bottom of the canyon there was a guy thumbing it so I pulled over and picked him up. Turns out he was a really cool guy, lived in Georgia as well, and even knew my friend who lives up in Ned. Small world!! Apparently it’s really common to hitch between Ned and Boulder. He told me that the nickname for that road was the hippy elevator and I had a good laugh about it… At one point during the drive I happened to glance over and notice the two cup holders in my car, only one of which had a bottle of water, the one I drink from when driving. I naturally asked if he wanted one and he eagerly accepted, saying that he just had some cocktails with his friends and could use some water. I reached back behind my seat and pulled out a fresh bottle for him. With this experience I really took note of how easily the water I had available blended with his desire for water, like two pieces of the puzzle. The link between the two was a very natural flow that really didn’t take much conscious thought. It’s as if I was guided to look in a certain place which triggered an idea within me.

Questionless Intuition

This is a big part of how I am now transitioning to experiencing intuition.

You see, it used to be that I’d have a few options in front of me and I’d stop and picture myself doing one of the options. Usually one of them would feel more light, expansive, spacious, joyous, exciting, free, light-hearted, easy, and fun. That sense of openness would be my answer. Yet doing it this way, I’d have to stop and deliberately ask and try out a few things, waiting to get that feeling of expansiveness before continuing.

After a while, you start to develop the ability to make that feeling of expansiveness your home. It’s not just your answer to questions, but because a feeling-based way of life. When you start to spend more and more time in this empty expansiveness, you find that there’s a natural arising of things to do, words to speak, places to go, and so on. It’s not just about big things like “Should I move here,” but it also helps guide conversations and the next topic to bring up as we speak. Certain topics have a sort of “vibrational signature” of expansiveness, openness, and light. I like to allow conversations to flow by maintaining that feeling first and foremost and bringing up words and ideas that also “fit” with this feeling.

Sometimes there are things I could say that feel like closure, judgment, and egotism. I’ve noticed that every time I bring up those words or ideas, conversations hit a snag. People don’t react as well. I don’t feel as good. It’s like anything that doesn’t match that feeling of openness and expansiveness doesn’t fit as part of the flow.

And so instead of stopping the flow to ask the intuition ahead of time if this or that is better, it becomes more of a natural continuous flow that you fall into, and you allow every action, word, and movement to be a natural expression of that expansiveness. Instead of a clear “this way” or “that way” that practically beats you over the head with an answer, it starts to become far more subtle so you really have to tune in and pay intention.

That feeling you get from your intuition becomes more than just an answer. It becomes a way of life…

Hiking Out Into the Woods

and so it is on that note that I headed out into the woods. Putting on my snow gear, I headed out into the woods to find a place to set up camp. One of the first potential camp sites I came to was this big clearing which looked to be like a meadow. I considered setting up my tent here, but got a feeling that I should keep walking. It wasn’t until afterwards that I remembered from the map that that wasn’t a meadow, but a frozen lake! Yikes.. that wouldn’t be a comfortable feeling to sleep on top of that…

Continuing to walk along the trail, I spotted this little area next to the trail that offered a perfect place to throw up a tent. It was surrounded by trees which offered a natural windbreak and was still right next to the trail which made for easy access.

That first day I simply sat back and relaxed. In the mountains. Finally…

Above is an afternoon shot. If you look at my boot, you’ll notice how the sun shines in from the side, from the southwest. In the mornings, it would rise from the southeast, right in the dead center of this shot. It would make for a brilliant morning…

One amazing thing about this area is the sound… Atop the spectacular limitless silence you have the wind as it blows across from peak to peak, rustling my tent as it blows by, the very occasional hikers (and dogs) that walk by, the rustling of my gear as I move around, the occasional plane that flies overhead, and the little birds that like to come by. Not much else…

I loved these little snow birds that were super friendly and curious. They’ll fly on over and land on a branch right over my tent or even come down and hop along the snow right next to my tent. I loved the little footprints they’d leave… You know how humans walk one foot in front of the other, leaving a trail of left, right, left, right? Well these little guys hop with both feet together so their tracks are a series of parallel lines that jump across the snow. Here’s one of the birds as he hopped right up to my tent and shared my view with me.

What Happens When You Don’t Get A Response From Your Intuition?

A little backstory about how I wound up coming to Colorado in the first place…

I’d been wanting to go set out and move somewhere more outdoorsy and spiritually open for a while now. Years even. The thing is I’d been too flat out terrified of doing so. Scared of life, basically.

Eventually I worked out the courage to go for it and started considering places to go: California, New Zealand, Colorado, etc. The synchronicities started popping up everywhere… Colorado. Colorado. Colorado. A friend of mine suggested I come on out to Boulder. Of course I’d still have the option to go somewhere else if I didn’t like it, but at least I’d be taking that first step. It sounded like fun, but for some reason I met a lot of resistance to the idea. A lot… I’d really like to do something like this, but could I really do it??

Since I’d been developing my intuitive capacity, I decided that I’d ask it whether or not now was the right time to go, and I’d go with what it said either way. The thing is, I COULDN’T get an answer from it no matter what I tried. How frustrating! It wasn’t fun feeling so indecisive, especially when another person’s plans depend upon your decision…

That whole thing fell through. It wasn’t until later that another friend suggested I check out Telluride, a small skiing town in southwest, CO. That sounded superexciting and when I checked it out, it felt like all systems go! Alright! Got a target! As I started making my plans, selling off the things I didn’t need, my excitement slowly started to fade from Telluride for some reason and Boulder started lighting back up for me. Fine! Alright! You’ve got my attention now. I now see that Telluride was simply being used as bait to get me to MOVE in that general direction. Once I did, it was easy enough to change to Boulder instead.

Here’s a map pointing out the two cities:

I bring up this story because on the second day of my trip out here to the mountains, I was wondering what I should do that morning after waking up. Should I get up and go hike out, hopefully not encountering deep snow along the way? Should I spend time meditating? What would be best for me to do right now? Again, no answer from the intuition…

As I sat in my tent, a few sets of snowshoers hiked past my tent along the trail. Most of the groups were your typical looking hikers, just kinda in zombie-mode as they walked through the woods. Then these two women walked by, both utterly radiant and beaming with joy. One was practically bouncing along the trail while the other looked over at my tent, smiled, and simply said hello. There’s my answer. I quickly put my shoes, grabbed my pack, and hit the trail.

Back In The Flow…

Again, this was another example of not needing to ask and get an answer, but simply relax and allow life to show me the flow in its own perfect time. I met up with these two women along a frozen lake at the end of the trail and sat down with them while we all had lunch together. Turns out that like most people I’d met here in Boulder, they were amazing! It’s soooo common here to be able to approach most anyone and be dive right into a conversation about energy, living in the moment, consciousness, spiritual awareness, following your joy, intuition, and so on. Back in Georgia people like this certainly existed, but it seemed to be more in small pockets within a larger bubble of Christianity. Here finding people who are more open-minded is basically the norm! It’s not that you have to deliberately talk about spirituality per se. You just be yourself, talk about how you live your life, ask them how they live theirs, talk about what you enjoy, ask them what they enjoy, and just talk about whatever comes up in the moment… Remember what I mentioned earlier about being in that feeling place of expansiveness and talking about whatever seems to naturally come from that space?

The three of us had an amazing time together and I really enjoyed their company… It’s so much easier to find people I click with out here.

Another great thing I love is how free and playful people can be out here. It’s so common to see dirt-covered cars out here. You can tell they’ve been out playing! The other day I was out hiking closer to Boulder with a meetup group. We were walking through a muddy patch and looking down at our footing to make sure every foot was placed in a good spot when I heard the familiar sucking sound of someone making impact in the mud. I look up to see this one woman laughing, having landed butt-first right in the mud, just covered in a splattering of brown goop. Since she was down, she played around in the mud a bit and made sure to get some pictures before finally getting up and out of the mud. People aren’t afraid to get dirty here…

On that note, here I am, sitting in a coffee shop back in Boulder, smelling like, well… smelling like you’d expect a person to smell after a few days of being out in the woods.

It was a wonderful drive down out of the mountains… after 3 days and 2 nights. The roads were nice and clear and the drive was so scenic and enjoyable…

It’s great to be down at a lower elevation. It was a bit tough to breathe at times up at 10,000 feet, especially the very first day. Coming back down nearly a mile in elevation it’s a bit different. It’s kinda like when you fast for a few days and then try eating again. Even though you haven’t eaten for days, you can’t eat a normal sized meal. It’s almost like your stomach shrunk. Coming back down from 10,000 feet, I could take a deep breath but it’d be slightly painful with my lungs expanding a bit more than they were used to. Fortunately it doesn’t take very long to acclimate.

Giving and Receiving

It was a really cool couple of days… I got to experience receiving from a lot of people and giving to a lot of people, giving out rides to those who needed them, giving time and sharing joy with those around me, giving food to the homeless on the side of the road, receiving food and snacks from others… There definitely seems to be a sense of liberated and open balance when you’re in the flow. When you need something and ask, it is given. When you have something which someone else needs, it feels great to give. You get to enjoy the way it feels to give and experience what it’s like to have enough NOW.

Also, there’s DEFINITELY a difference between giving from a place of abundance and having more than enough versus giving and feeling like you have less in the end but you do it anyways because it’s the “compassionate” or “spiritual” or “loving” thing to do. It seems like when you give from a place of lack, you experience yourself having less at the cost of the other having more. Win/lose. That’s a good start and it’s well-intentioned, but there is something better. When you give from the feeling place of having enough, the other experiences having more and you (seeing yourself as a Source with yet even more to give) experience having more as well. It winds up being win/win. Again, the key is to come from a feeling place of having enough. It’s not about what external circumstances are showing you. It’s about what feeling place you come from. That’s the key here.

So getting yourself into a place of abundance, well-being, and having enough, that seems to be super-important when it comes to giving. Giving seems to be most enjoyable and most beneficial to everyone when people choose to be in a place of abundance and are open to both giving and receiving. Life flows both ways. In truth, there’s really only one flow happening here, and we’re all open vessels allowing (or resisting) the flow, but never controlling.

A Final Note: Gratitude

Gratitude… gratitude is awesome. Being thankful for what you do have… it’s like this one simple state of being opens you up to the flow, thereby opening yourself up to receiving even more and being able to give even more. It’s almost like gratitude and appreciation (and I’ve never heard anyone say this this way… it’s just coming to me now) opens up a valve for the flow. Saying it now and understanding the LoA, it makes a lot of sense. Abraham calls it “being in the vortex” and this is basically the same thing. This is that.

So “be happy for what you have”… It’s not something your parents tell you when you used to whine about what you wanted and they wanted you to quit whining… Okay, so it may be a little bit of that too but there is a deep wisdom in that statement. “Be happy for what you have.” Really. It’ll transform your life…

and last but not least, let’s play a game called “Spot the Picnic Table!”

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

Heaven’s Gates by Marc Adamus

When you realize it’s a dream, you can afford to play. The same thing happens when you realize that ordinary life is just a dream, just a movie, just a play. You don’t become more cautious, more timid, more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely because it’s all a dream, it’s all pure Emptiness. You don’t feel less, you feel more—because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come pouring through, because it’s all your dream. Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical effervescence. Pain is more painful and happiness is happier; joy is more joyous and sorrow is even sadder. It all comes radiantly alive to the mirror-mind, the mind that doesn’t grasp or avoid, but simply witnesses the play, and therefore can afford to play, even as it watches.

-Ken Wilber

When I graduated from college, I deliberated decided not to get a job and do the whole career thing and instead devote myself fully to my spirituality, to really getting this whole enlightenment thing down.

Now, 3 years later, I have come to several conclusions.

1. I got into this wanting to know the Truth. Now I know that I really know nothing to know and this freedom and simplicity cracks me up. Somehow there is joy in this emptiness of not knowing *and* being totally at peace with it, in this not knowing and not trying to figure something else out. Instead there’s just the ecstasy of being who you really are.
2. When you surrender trying to get somewhere as if there’s some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you find that there is now a natural supportive unfoldment of life in this moment and that you are an inseparable part of it. When you let go and simply allow the joy of being to shine forth, call it shining your light or whatever, this is truly an amazing experience and seems to be how we were really *meant* to live before we got all caught up in egoland and attachmentville.
3. The desire of ego is essentially to obtain, acquire, and all that jazz… basically ways to achieve security, approval, control, and all the other things it feels it lacks. The desire of Spirit is to be itself, know itself, and experience itself in its absolute pristine glory, to experience the extraordinary in the ordinary, to experience what it already is now. It takes care of the well-being of the mind and body when we allow the energy of our Light/Spirit/Soul/Heart/Source to be what life is all about.

Enjoying Life

The basis of life is absolute freedom. The objective of life is absolute joy.

-Abraham-Hicks

It’s not about seeking Truth, but being Truth. It’s not about seeking Joy, but being Joy. It’s not about seeking Love, but being Love. You don’t go out into the world seeking Truth any more than you go to a movie theater to find the Truth. That’d be silly. Just because the movie is “an illusion” doesn’t mean you need to stop going to the movies. Similarly, that doesn’t mean you stop living your life. Instead, you go to the movies for the thrill of the experience. That’s it. The same with this world. Truth is found within and once it wakes up within you, there is a unique way that it’ll want to express itself out through you.

It is in the nature of being to see adventure in becoming, as it is in the very nature of becoming to seek peace in being.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

and so, in the name of Pure Joy I am moving to Boulder, CO. My inner guidance and outer confirmations are all pointing towards this move. My intuition and excitement are all giving me the green light. Finally!! Full speed ahead! I’ve been wanting to do something for ages! I even tried to give it a go a few months ago but couldn’t fully commit to it since I couldn’t feel that inner okay. Now that it’s here, it’s been such a joy to watch as everything necessary for this trip thus far miracoulsly and synchronistically unfold when needed. I’ll admit there’s also a lot of sadness in letting go of my old home here in Roswell and saying goodbye to my friends and family. At the same time, there’s this deep joy of experiencing this moment AND experiencing the anticipation of what is yet to unfold.

Where am I gonna live? I’ll figure that out when I get there!

What am I gonna do when I get there? Let’s go find out!

What am I gonna do for money? Figuring out those details is the universe’s job! My job is simply to be happy!

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.

-Joseph Campbell

It’s such a blast to actually follow my dreams and watch as the doors open. It’s not that you’ll know everything ahead of time. It’s that just start moving and continue taking the next step and watch as the doors open up, often times after you’ve already started heading in that direction. Seeing the Law of Attraction really work for you and actually getting a handle on creating your life experience, that’s a lot of fun!!

Keeping Up with Ariel’s Adventure

Since I’ll be on the road by the time this post goes live, I probably won’t be updating this blog as regularly. However you can follow my travels on my photoblog which I will be updating from the road. I want to document what it’s like to live life from a place of Oneness and Joy, as fully aligned with Source energy as possible.

My tentative plan involves going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, stopping in Dallas to shoot a cheer competition, exploring the scenic desert landscapes in the southwest, hiking down from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and camping down on the floor, visiting several national parks in Utah including Canyonlands and Arches to hike, camp, and shoot photos, and finally making my way east across the Rockies into Colorado to settle in and find a new place to call home for however long, stopping to meet friends all along the way.

So stay tuned for more fun and games on the photoblog. See you guys around!

-Ariel

Have you ever heard of the term “monkey mind?” It’s basically when your mind is running amok and your thoughts are going crazy. When that happens, what to do? What to do?

Well there’s two schools of thought (no pun intended) that we can discuss:

1) Quiet your mind

2) Direct your mind deliberately towards better feeling thoughts

Both techniques are designed to help you release resistance, experience your true self, and express your natural radiance as you live your life from moment to moment.

That said, there are some key differences such as the nature of free will, as we will explore some of these differences below:

Quieting the Mind

In this camp you’ve got teachers like Ramana (who I’ve quoted below), Mooji, and Gangaji who all come from the same lineage in Advaita. (Ramana taught Papaji who taught both Mooji and Gangaji.) The “goal” in this tradition is realization of the Self and the discovery of freedom in the recognition of your true nature as nonconceptual awareness that always is. Awareness and the Self are emphasized over thought.

He who gives himself up to the Self that is God is the most excellent devotee. Giving one’s self up to God means remaining constantly in the Self without giving room for the rise of any thoughts other than that of the Self. Whatever burdens are thrown on God, He bears them. Since the supreme power of God makes all things move, why should we, without submitting ourselves to it, constantly worry ourselves with thoughts as to what should be done and how, and what should not be done and how not? We know that the train carries all loads, so after getting on it why should we carry our small luggage on our head to our discomfort, instead of putting it down in the train and feeling at ease?

-Ramana Maharshi

This is basically the ultimate “Let go and let God” outlook and even the surrendering of one’s free will with the understanding that Creation is its own independent entity which we are to surrender to. In this tradition, it is taught that free will is actually an illusion. “What to do and how to live your life” is not directly taught in specifics. Instead you are given suggestions and pointers to look within and out of that you’ll find that decisions and actions will arise naturally and spontaneously, as if you are being lived rather than deliberately choosing what to do. “It is not I but the Father with me who does these works.”

Reaching for Better Feeling Thoughts

In this camp you’ve got your self-improvement people and your Law of Attraction people. To summarize this perspective, I’d like to share with you the following wonderful video by Abraham-Hicks.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJlOZNtarEc

Questioner: I want to stop the monkey mind. Help me stop my monkey mind.

Abe: We don’t want to stop your monkey mind. We just want to help you train your monkey mind because thoughts that are going with the flow are ultimately more satisfying than no thought.

But think about what meditation is. Meditation is a releasing of thought and in the releasing of that resistance there’s this natural turning and going with the flow. That’s the advantage.

What we always say about the subject of meditation is we would rather see you in appreciation because in appreciation your mind is active and aligned and that’s a fuller use of the creative you than having a quieted mind which is offering no resistance, but we would encourage if your mind is scattered and it is taking you in opposition then of course you’d want to quiet it, but if your mind is active and it is moving you in the direction of the call of Source then of course you’re wanting to encourage that.

“I’m going to direct my mind and if I can’t direct it the way I want to, if I can’t easily direct my mind into a really good feeling place, then I’ll quiet it instead.” That’s the way we would use meditation.

Those who would say, “I’m going to meditate for many hours in a day. I’m gonna withdraw,” are those who have decided not to direct their mind, really. You’re a creator. You didn’t come forth to be on pause. You are a creator, but pause is better than moving upstream… so how ’bout this? “I’m moving upstream, I pause, turn my boat, and then I focus on things I want.” That would be a good application of meditation.

The main focus here is to focus your attention solely upon things that you want, things that feel good. Rather than deliberately focusing within back towards awareness, awareness is deliberated focused out into the world and inner being is deliberately allowed to actively flow into the world. Basically you go out and live your life in joy.

Emotions are not a mysterious problem that simply need to be surrendered to, but with the conscious understanding of one’s emotional guidance system and that emotions are simply an indicator telling you how in alignment with Source energy (or the truth of your being) your thoughts are, you can deliberately align your thoughts with Source and thus create a better life for yourself.

Rather than recognizing that all stories are untrue, made-up, and thus dismissing them as illusion, one decides to actively use the mind as a tool by telling better stories and better stories and better stories, evolving and strengthening this character running around on the planet. For example, personal development blogger Steve Pavlina recently posted an article on How to Build a Stronger Ego which (for people who are taught that the ideal state is egolessness) contains a number of surprisingly excellent points.

But remember, when it comes to manifestation, living the life of your dreams, and choosing better feeling thoughts, it’s not about “getting there” that is the point. The manifestation itself is not actually the point. It’s about enjoying the process itself NOW by aligning yourself to the energy of Source that is You through the deliberate focusing upon what you want and the resultant flowing of Source energy through you. THAT is the real point, to experience that feeling of creative flow, that enthusiasm and joy and zest for life. The manifestational goal is just the bait to get you moving. As is often said, life is about the journey, not the destination. The energy of the Absolute is allowed to flow into the world of the relative and the two operate in harmony together.

Relationship with Desire

You can’t permanently quench your ego’s continuous hunger for more. Every time you get what you want, you’ll find you’ve now arrived at a new place which creates a new asking and a new desire for yet even more.

In the “quiet your mind” camp, this is generally seen as a problem to overcome and part of the cause of suffering and therefore the spiritual path involves finding the eternal presence within that’s innately satisfied by its very nature for it already IS everything, infinitely everything, and thus doesn’t require that you obtain more in order to feel good, including any particular experience or state of being. When you don’t believe your thoughts at all in the first place, what then when it comes to choosing better feeling thoughts?

In the “reach for better feeling thoughts” camp, that hunger for more is seen as a good thing for it is what continues the eternal drive for creative expansion. It is how we actively and deliberately take advantage of our innate creative powers. There is no end to infinity and given that we are infinite beings, this desire calls us to experience more and more and more of ourselves.

Both perspectives acknowledge that it’s not about the getting of the thing that leads to happiness. Both stress the utmost importance of inner being. It seems the main difference is one’s relationship to desire and how desire is seen… as a beneficial thing to pursue or not.

What Do You Choose

Happiness via silent awareness or happiness via aligned thought?

I’m not here to set it up as an either/or thing by any means as I’ve found tremendous value in both. In fact, it even seems that there can be a happy marriage between the two.

What’s your take on the matter from your own life experience? What have you found thus far to be the most effective way for you of living your life in this world?

So the usual definition of enlightenment would include something along the lines of seeing reality as it actually is in its undivided state, seeing the One in the All, returning to one’s natural state of unity rather than separation, recognizing your true nature to be present moment awareness, or quite simply being who you really are.

To add another perspective to the mix, let’s look at Abraham-Hicks’ definition of enlightenment, which is basically being a blended being and being in the vortex by aligning to the energy of Source energy, but not necessarily in every moment of every day. This is somewhat different than the Advaita, Zen, and Buddhist perspectives of enlightenment.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKi3CSRk5ew

There’s this idea that once you’re enlightened, you will no longer experience any negative emotion and you will be in a place of permanent happiness, and yet what I have from my own experience (which was very confusing at first), from those I have talked to, and even from well-known teachers like Adyashanti, Papaji, Mooji, Nisargadatta, and numerous other enlightened teachers, it’s not about a lasting experience of happiness or peace, but recognizing the well-being that is present from the eternal Self that you are, regardless of any emotional state.

In the video above, Abraham points out that while the well-being of Source is eternal and unchanging, the experience of that and the manifestation of that here in this time/space reality is not how any of us are designed to live our lives in physical form. We’re designed to experience the contrast as a way to continue the unfoldment of creating. By seeing what we don’t want, that helps us know what we do want and thus can be used as a positive way, even if the focusing on what we don’t want takes us out of the vortex momentarily. To experience the negative emotions that result from that is very much okay. It’s by design. It’s not a sign of failure or not being spiritual or enlightened enough. It’s just a sign that thoughts are arising within us in the moment that are out of alignment with Source energy/Love/Truth. That’s ALL.

Living It

It’s easy to get into a discussion about nonduality, consciousness, awareness, oneness, and all these topics which to me honestly feel kinda heavy at this point to talk about. Very seri0us almost.

And yet what I’m coming to find is the more I surrender, let go, reach for thoughts that feel better, perform self-inquiry, do some releasing work like The Sedona Method or The Work, or allow things to be as they are, which are all basically ways to release the ego’s resistance to what is which is the foundation for the separate self that for so long has been a part of the human experience, the more I both expand my awareness of All That Is (the light and the dark) as well as discover this eternal bliss that is always present, and the more I live life as an expression of and celebration of joy and love. Heck, I find myself just not really caring about “enlightenment” anymore and instead enjoy living this life experience in this moment, here and now, fully as I AM.

What is being discovered is that, as so many masters have said, YOU are the point, YOU are the Divine, and the Kingdom of God is within YOU. YOU are the gift. YOU are what you have been looking for. The I AM is IT!! Just to BE what you ARE is already a tremendous blessing, and to be that in living expression by having this life experience which allows us to both know and EXPERIENCE who we really are… MAN that’s so good… That’s grounding the spiritual energy into the physical, uniting the up here with down here, and bringing heaven down to earth as is often said. And so the point is just to enjoy the love that is you, the joy that is you, the well-being that is you, here and now. EnJOY it! In Joy.

“If you really want enlightenment, just lighten up!”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pkxFNc8kCY

True Enlightenment is moving to the rhythm of the internal inspiration that is coming in response to the individual desire.

Enlightenment is allowing my connection to the Source that is me for the fulfillment of the things that I have individually defined in my time/space reality. That’s as good as it gets, you see.

-Abraham

We can talk about going with the flow, and from a place of Oneness, there is only the flow of life. There are no separate parts, just this one harmonious flow of many apparent individuals. To paraphrase the Sufi poet Rumi, you are the entire ocean, and the entire ocean is contained in each drop, expressing itself as each drop. We can allow everything to be as it is and find that there’s this natural intuitive movement within us to flow this way or that, as if we have an inner sense of what the next step is and how to respond spontaneously in any moment. No rules. Just natural flow. Simple. Light. Ease.

For the first time since starting this blog, I feel a sense of completion in terms of writing about spirituality, consciousness, nonduality, and the nature of the egoic mind. The recent post Want to Wake Up? Focus Upon the “I Am” sealed the deal. There are so many fun things to explore in the spiritual arena including chakras, past lives, the law of attraction, and all that jazz, but when it comes to waking up from the dream of separation, that post goes right to the heart of enlightenment. It is what I had heard many times while passionately seeking and yet continually overlooked and what what shines clearly today as the seeking energy is seen through. The sheer simplicity of the I AM, the I AM that’s ALWAYS here.

How then shall I live?

Something that Adyashanti once said has really left an impression upon me. He said that the first and primary question of the spiritual journey is Who Am I? Once that is discovered, the next question is How then shall I live? It is this second question that takes an internal realization and expresses it as an external manifestation. It is this second question which helps our internal transformation permeate all aspects of our being. It is this second question that allows you to come back and be in this world, but not of it. It is this second question that shifts us from simply knowing and being the Truth to LIVING the Truth, from realizing to experiencing, and to letting go of all that is not in harmony with the infinite being that we have realized ourselves to be. This is what this physical experience, from my perspective, is all about: experiencing more and more of who you really are. Since you are All That Is, what else is there to experience?

Adyashanti has a book titled Emptiness Dancing. While I haven’t actually read the book, I’ve heard him explain the phrase before elsewhere and it’s so apropos to this stage of the journey. It’s about the transition from simply being emptiness to coming back down off the mountaintop and being the emptiness dancing in the world. The world of form is not separate from the world of formlessness. They go hand in hand in one inseparable dance.

Doctors, lawyers, politicians and professors Modern science, the oppressed and the oppressors Religious leaders, the gurus and the shamans Everybody has one thing in common: We are nothing pretending to be something We are nothing pretending to be something -Here II Here, Plankton

So… how then shall I live?

Fully Experiencing Life in this Moment

The other day I was working on some childhood issues with a friend and found myself starting to leave my body again. It was basically a way of me trying to avoid life and not experience the unhealed trauma within and so I was guided to come back into my body and really feel what was arising within and leading to much of my unconscious behavior. It’s amazing how often I live in avoidance to life. For example, when there’s negative emotions (whether in myself or in others), rather than feel the energetic flow and fully allow the emotional energy to be here as part of the richness of life, there’s the (very understandable) movement to fix the situation and create a better feeling experience or somehow get rid of the negative stuff, but this only seems to invalidate the unpleasurable stuff, not release it and heal it.

“You have the right to think and believe whatever you want. I am simply here to love you as you are.” -Matt Kahn

We hear about people going off into a cave and that seems to be a great way of avoiding life, of trying to cut out the external world (including thoughts) so that you can experience the inner world. After all, the kingdom of God is within you and nothing outside of you makes you happy anyways, so spend time going within because that’s where the real treasure lies. So it makes sense that focusing on the internal world is the next step for those of us who had been completely and totally focused upon the external world of form. At this stage the journey involves swinging to the other end of the pendulum, from the world of form outside of us to the world of formlessness within, to the world of spirit. Eventually there is a natural rebalancing of the pendulum as the external world of form and the internal world of formlessness can be experienced together, until we discover that they can play together nicely.

“The practice of meditation is represented by the three monkeys, who cover their eyes, ears and mouths so as to avoid the phenomenal world. The practice of non-meditation is ceasing to be the see-er, hearer or speaker while eyes, ears and mouths are fulfilling their function in daily life.” -Wei Wu Wei

Eckhart Tolle calls it being present. Byron Katie calls it loving what is. Today I’d like to call it fully experiencing life as it is in this moment, being intimately one with whatever is arising. No more turning away, distracting yourself from, or protecting yourself from, but a total and complete openness to and embrace of what is. Nisargadatta refers to this as affectionate awareness. These are all beautiful pointers to deeply experiencing this moment.

Creating the Life of your Dreams

A few weeks back a TON of insights came through me on the topics of living the life of your dreams, living an unlimited life that is not held back by doubt or fear, going beyond your unhealed energy, living a life guided by your heart and soul, living life from a place of authenticity and alignment with universal law, and so on. It’s not about self-improvement, as if the point was to make a better/richer/happier/more successful mask, but to be that which is beyond all masks and express the unique essence of what you REALLY are in every moment, however your energy chooses to expresses itself. Instead of transitioning from who you believe yourself to be to something even better (self-improvement.. notice the implied sense of judgement from worse to better and the word ‘improvement’), it’s about expanding the degree to which you experience what you really are (being yourself).

You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness. -Eckhart Tolle

What was seen next was that before I could teach this to anyone else, I had to first live it and master it myself in my own life. Thus my life will become a teaching and a sharing, even though I don’t fully understand yet what all this will entail. As is often said, the best way to convey or teach a message is to live it. This is a gift I give not only to the world, but (perhaps first and foremost) to myself.

Being Unconditionally Supported

In a recent post featuring an interview with Lester Levenson, a story is shared how he travels around the country without the money or wherewithal to make the trip, and yet everything he needs is effortlessly and miraculously provided. I LOVE that!! He makes a point that once you master the ability to create what you need at will, no longer do you need to hoard lots of things as a buffer “just in case” you’ll need it in the future. For example, let’s say you were so incredibly supported by the universe that you had the ability to create for yourself whatever experience you so desired. In this case, how necessary would it be to save up or earn all the money first before heading out to go do what you wish to do? For many of us, we have the belief that we need to have the money available before we can do certain things. I’m not saying this is good or bad, right or wrong, but I am pointing out that it is a belief we have adopted and thus live by while there are other ways of being supported by the universe. Here’s a wonderful Bashar video where he helps someone open up to really living this way in his own life:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GfaaO-_Clk

So you know the whole classic “Go meditate on a mountain and give up everything and if you can find inner peace and well-being without all the worldly stuff, then you can have true happiness” idea? That’s all well and good, but I don’t think that’s necessarily everyone’s path. Plus it can be a convenient cop-out from actually living life and being the truth and love that you’ve realized yourself to be.

When we get inner inspiration in whatever form, we can think of our physical vessels as a sort of container or pipe. In order for the inspiration to continue to flow into us, we must ground that energy into this world by manifesting and creating whatever it is that we are inspired to create. This way Source has a reason to give us more ideas. Why give us more if we’re not already using what we’ve already received? We’re given natural gifts and talents for a reason here… Yes we can try and stop or ignore that flow, but that resistance is quite painful to experience. It feels to be very much out of harmony with the natural flow. In a nutshell, it sucks.

Who does it serve if we play small? Imagine if Edison didn’t bother inventing, if Beethoven ignored his impulses to compose, if MLK Jr. decided he’d be better off keeping his ideas to himself. It’s a great disservice to All That Is if we choose to hold back and not share out gifts to the world.

The opportunity here, in these times of blossoming self-awareness, is to recognize the unlimited potential in who and what you are, and to gift yourself with permission to express that knowingness as you choose to.

-Rasha

Surrender isn’t actually about not-doing, tossing in your cards, and giving up on life, but about playing the game in full alignment with one’s inner guidance, intuitive wisdom, connection with Source, or whatever phrase you wanna use.

Being silent certainly has its place, but not when it’s used as a way to resist the flow of life, as if being silent is somehow more spiritual or whatever. When we’re called to be silent, we’ll be silent. When we’re called to speak, we speak. Being silent is not necessarily something that we need to do in every moment. The same applies with speaking. Silence is the home of Source, yes, our true home, yes, but manifest physical reality is not separate from that or in any way inferior to that.

“I had an urge to express certain things and now I have and the urge is gone. That’s really the whole story.”

-Jed McKenna

This creative process is quite natural. Flow of the river.

Now the ego may try to control this process, invest itself in a particular outcome, need something in particular to happen, want to do things right, and so on, but this is far more simple than any of that. Inspiration arises, action is taken, and then the next thing comes… unless it doesn’t. Whatever happens, and I mean whatever happens, our experience of life becomes a progressively increasing degree of acceptance and surrender to what is. You basically go with the flow. This was discussed previously in the post about the second half of allowing everything to be as it is.

We all have creative inspiration. It’s normal. It’s natural. And in fact that’s the way life should be. How do we know? Because that’s what is.

When we try to box our creative endeavors into a particular form, whether it’s painting, speaking, writing, or whatever else… when we try to fit this flow of energy into a particular box, we actually prevent it from taking its natural form.

Creative energies can take any and every form, and no form is better than any other. I’m writing this simply for myself, but since myself includes you, this makes things that much easier.

Anyways, it’s totally okay to allow your path in life to meander whichever way it goes. Our actions don’t always have to take a particular form in order for us to be living in alignment with this creative flow. It’s about being who we are, regardless of what outer expression it takes.

It’s yet another let go of control, of being this as opposed to that, and of trying to do it right. Just flow with it, whatever form it takes. Just flow…