Watch Your Step
Stepping, and the space in which a step occurs, are inextricable.
Liberation is inevitable as awareness shifts from the former to the latter.
Self-Actualization Is Just The Beginning
Maslow only had it partly right: Self-actualization is a peak experience individuals can strive towards and perhaps reach. He theorized that this was the final stage of our life’s journey, but it turns out that this stage is simply the platform from which a new adventure begins.
We now stand in our same shoes, though to us they look brand new.
It is essential that we use our time at the peak to patiently take a thorough inventory of any fundamental needs that were not adequately integrated to that point. Only then can we step boldly onto unknown paths, free from any fear that our lives will come crumbling down around us as a result of some rookie mistake.
Authentic Satisfaction
Before an experience of authenticity, nothing is ultimately satisfying. After an experience of authenticity, everything is inherently satisfying.
Effortless
I used to climb mountains. Now the mountains climb me.
Signposts
What is it that keeps us waking up in the same reality day after day? And especially when that reality is one that leaves us feeling unsatisfied or stifled or suffocated: why do we continue to subject ourselves to it? What is truly stopping us from creating that experience of life that we have always dreamed of?
Fear, in some form or another, is a likely culprit. And fear has so many different faces it is impossible to list them all here. But when we get to the very root of all fear, what we find is that it is a learned behavior, and a choice we are making to be afraid. We have been led to believe that fear is real and that fear is scary. Most of us use it as a guide to avoid certain situations because avoidance gives us an illusion of safety, and an illusion of comfort.
But even beyond that, I would assert that we often choose to be limited by that fear because we are more afraid of a world without limitations. Our minds run rampant with all sorts of visions of what people would do if they were not subject to a fear of the rules and laws, both expressed and implied, of sharing this world together.
But when we come to realize that we need not fear fear, we also realize that those “Mad Max” scenarios only serve to keep us from, and ultimately guide us to, our liberation from those fears. And when released, we possess a whole different understanding of what a world without limitations and fear means. In a very real way, in letting go of fear, we experience a feeling of safeness that far surpasses any we could ever achieve through guarding ourselves from fearful things.
Is it possible that there is an altruistic purpose for fear? Yes. Fear is an essential and beautiful attribute of humanity, and our willingness to accept fear at our very core allows us to discover a treasure greater than any we could have ever wished for or dreamed of.
Ask yourself the following question, but instead of looking for an answer in words, open to experiencing the true answer that resides beyond words: What is it that allows the fear to be here to be experienced in the first place?
The answer is not in the stillness that you experienced as you awaited a response, it is the stillness that experienced you. That stillness has always been here, available to you, holding you in good times and bad without fear or judgment. That stillness is what allows this experience of life to be unfolding, and it is limitless. As an expression of that stillness, we are limitless as well. The only thing that keeps us unaware of that limitlessness is our busy mind chatter and the significance that our minds place on form over stillness.
While at this point in our evolution there are some true limitations to how quickly and easily we can shift our realities, truly we are far less limited than we have come to believe. We have far more control over our lives than we realize, and when we can wake up to that fact, we tap into the inspiration and empowerment necessary to make any changes that need to be made, or find the fulfillment that was available to us in our current situation all along.
Our life situations then become a choice, and one that we gratefully make over and over. Because each situation is an active choice, we become a portal for timeless, unfettered creativity to enter this realm of conditioned time.
Deep down we know that any experience in form will ultimately be unsatisfying. By staying in unsatisfying situations, we are able to tap into the fears that are supporting that dissatisfaction. It is when we get inside the fear that we find release from all fear, and we are welcomed home into the love that was calling to us this whole time. It was always available to us, but because it was masked as fear, we resisted it.
Welcome fear. Allow it to serve you. Realize its purpose is to lead you home. Recognize that what were once unwelcomed feelings of fear are now your greatest signposts leading you on the path to your ultimate liberation from that fear entirely. It is the key to setting your spirit free from the illusive chains that limit your experience of bliss, but you can only open to it when you are ready to be done experiencing limitation.
Reflecting Truth
Awakening to our eternal nature and realizing our absolute connectedness to all of life is something that must be directly experienced in order to be truly understood. Words and people can point us in the right direction, but ultimately it is a journey of one.
It is our willingness to set aside our beliefs and ideals in order to discover what is true beyond all beliefs and ideals that will deliver us from fear and the suffering it causes. It is a fear that arises from the illusion that we are exclusively separate beings in this experience of life, and when that apparent truth is revealed as being only relatively true, a healing occurs and fear is replaced with love. There is an experience of intense compassion, for ourselves as well as for others, for all the unskillful behavior that was perpetrated in service to that naïve illusion of separateness.
Gratitude then floods in for all we have and for the opportunity to experience it for the first time without judgment. There is gratitude for those who awakened before us for their service in paving the way so that we might discover the path for ourselves. And there is gratitude for the joy we find in each simple act, even if it is just breathing.
And then we settle in to the peace and perfection of this experience. Driven by love instead of fear, we bring the power of pure creative intent to each moment of our day as we reap the lessons available to us in our interactions with life. We tap into a wealth of inspired acts, and knowing beyond any doubt what it is we have to do, each task is infused with an intangible quality and effectiveness as we rise to meet the challenges we face with ease and certainty. Beyond that, the answers to so many of life’s questions that have plagued us are readily at our disposal.
From that platform, when we reach out to another in an open exchange, it is an opportunity to experience the truth of our connectedness to a new degree. We learn to trust, ourselves as well as others, in a way that we could never get to on our own. There is great power woven into the sincere offering of a clear reflection, as we listen without judgment to the words of another. In knowing another at that most intimate level, our own essential being stands more clearly revealed.
Our initial awakening is a moment that can only be experienced within ourselves, but once we have settled into that truth, it is helpful and useful to open ourselves to those around us so that we may experience that truth at the deepest level. Even those who still operate from a place of separateness can serve to expand our experience of it, as it is often they who challenge us most by highlighting conditioned patterns of judgment left over from our previous unenlightened state.
But when we can share with another who is deeply rooted in higher consciousness, our own experience of it is affirmed at an entirely different level. The exchanges that take place speak directly to those questions that continue to elude us, as sometimes we are just too close to the answer to be able to see it for ourselves. Even if no answers are offered in the exchange, just the simple act of asking out loud in the presence of another is enough to lead us to discover it for ourselves.
Awakening from the illusion of separateness is the birthright of every sentient being. It is a deeply personal experience of healing, and yet at the same time there is nothing “personal” about it. In honoring our connectedness to all life, we help others who are still suffering find their way to healing by not contaminating the field of consciousness with judgment and negativity. Their own illusions then stand unopposed, allowing them to witness the futility of their own conditioned thoughts for themselves. And when we are able to connect with other awakened beings, any lingering limitations of our own are revealed, and the extent of our healing continues to be experienced at ever deepening levels in the whole of life making it easier for others to awaken too.
Eternal Presence
When we are present, the mind-made stories stop, and past and future no longer resonate. We experience the stillness and connectedness within ourselves and all of life that holds the vibrating atoms that science tells us are the fundamental building blocks of life. It is the intangible properties of the nucleus of the atom that lend a sense of concrete reality to this dimension, but it is the unknowable stillness that pulses those particles into existence and binds them together to form those atoms that is the backdrop to this physical aspect of time within eternity.
That stillness organizes and orchestrates this ebb and flow of energy simply for the love and joy of creating. It is this stillness that is the true foundation of existence. It is our innate eternity beyond our mind-made, time-based self. When we are present to this moment, we open to the experience of our greater eternal composition. From a platform of presence, all things are realized to be as perfect as they are irrelevant. There is a strong sense of all that went into making that one moment possible, and a wave of gratitude washes over us, cleansing our minds momentarily of any thoughts of dissension.
From here, all things are seen as possible, but yet there is a sense that no changes are necessary. It is only when we fall back into thought, when we descend from that mountain top, that we become inspired to act in service to the whole of life. With a purpose beyond our own, we are infused with a sense of aliveness as we turn to face those things that have limited our beings in this experience of form.
Having shed the burden of carrying stories of individual triumphs and traumas that cluttered our minds and limited our beings, we see clearly the true issues that plague humanity and threaten our existence. In that gift of clarity, our efforts become aligned with the purposeful intent of creation. Freed from mind-made troubles, every breath and action becomes a celebration of the creative force that willed us into being.
To an eternal being, fear is recognized as just another aspect of love. It is fear that limits our experience of life, but through experiencing limitations our beings can learn to love in ways that they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Without a fear of loss, one is limited in their ability to really appreciate the depth of all they have. Upon experiencing the truth that nothing can ever be gained or lost, fear is replaced with an undercurrent of unconditioned love.
Any limitations experienced from that point forward are recognized as conditioned thought, and as we shine the light of consciousness upon those fears, we are released ever deeper into our eternity. There is gratitude for those moments that used to tie us up in knots, as they serve to highlight the limitations that are still at work in the background of our psychology. As we unravel the stories that limit us, we find love was there with us every step of the journey. We experience the true purpose and meaning of life, as well as our own significance within the larger cosmic order, in a way that cannot be explained.
The physical quality to this dimension of our experience can seem absolute and all important. This gives rise to fear, and we exhaust immense energy in our futile attempts to guard against or escape those situations we have deemed as fearful. Upon awakening, we realize that what we have been guarding against all this time was nothing more than fearful stories of past and future. Then as fear surfaces, we turn towards it instead of running away. In opening to our fear, we tap into the love that was available to us all along.
Who Are You?
The thing about tapping into conscious awareness is that in an instant you know “where” and “why” and “how” and “what” for all of about fifteen seconds (if you’re lucky), and the “who” just becomes irrelevant. Liberation is not a big enough word for that experience.
Then, your mind reboots and starts trying to grab onto it and make it into an identity: an experience “I” had, what “I” am, why “I’m” special. And then the mind starts diverting energy and effort to recapture that same experience, which of course it never can exactly: “You are now reentering the realm of “suffering”. Please keep your seat belts fastened and your hands in the cart at all times…”
Eventually you do shift again, and again, and again, ever deeper into the truth. Each time holds new lessons and each time finds deeper peace. You get more comfortable not knowing who you are anymore. Sure there is a person here, and that person can still function quite normally in the world. What aren’t here anymore are the thoughts that limited your being in this world.
To discover the depth of the truth of who you are, you need only become comfortable with not knowing, because it really is a moving target. It’s one thing to say “I am [fill in the blank]” and have those all be relative facts, but it’s another to be identified with those thought forms as being the absolute totality of all that you are. Essentially, it’s the thing that we have no way of knowing or describing that is more “us” than anything.
Words make us believe we know something, when really we just know about that thing (Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”). No “thing” is ever the same from one moment to the next, because we exist in a world of fluctuating energy. Essentially, one can never really know any “thing”. What you think of as “you” or “I” is really just a bunch of atoms being held together by the mystery of Life.
It is “that” that persists beyond existence that is who you are. We are that eternal conscious awareness, tuned to just the right frequency to hold energy in a state of matter until the biology breaks down beyond repair. Who are we then? Surprise, surprise: we are still “that” but without the burden of the filter of the mind-made, thought-and-stuff identified “self” that we kept trying to perfect all those years.
There is no need to wait until you die to discover eternity. It’s here now, and it is you. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be eternal now would it? All you need to do to find it is just be who you are in this one moment and not create a mind-made identity out of it. Have thoughts, and then let them go: don’t seek to find yourself in them. Allow others to be who they are in that one moment, but don’t make their thoughts or actions into their identity either. The moment you think you know them is the moment you are no longer in touch with your eternal self.
You will know you have tapped into your true essential nature when you can ask the question: “Who am I?” and then instead of filling up the space that follows with an answer, you get a warm, comforting feeling from leaving it blank. You know that that stillness is more “you” than any words could ever capture. When you know yourself as “that”, you no longer feel the need to try to fill up your “self” with stuff, because you know there is nothing you can add to yourself that would make you any more complete or more fulfilled. Life then becomes about experiencing life, and your identity is then inseperable from that experience.
A Hero’s Tale
There is a story inside of us beyond the one we tell ourselves. It is a hero’s tale of perseverance and triumph, but it can only be revealed upon surrendering the story of our past. That story we’ve been weaving since the day we were born is a child’s tale of innocence: an idealized fable of true love and “happily ever after”. It’s that story that has led us to suffer and struggle and blind us to our true selves. True love and “happily ever after” do exist, but you will never discover them as long as you are trapped inside a story of what you thought they should look like in your life.
The ultimate life story is one that cannot be planned or thought. It must be lived in order to be believed, otherwise it remains a fairy tale or a work of science fiction. The only way to tap into that journey is to dive head first into the belly of the beast that scares you. All that you resist must be welcomed with open arms as the gift that it is. Without those obstacles, we have no way of discovering the truth of who we are beyond who we think we are and who we think we want to be.
It is simultaneously the most difficult thing, and the absolute easiest thing, you can ever do, but you have to choose it and you have to commit to it. It is not for everyone, and it is not a required course. You will still graduate eventually, though your journey will be marked by unfulfilled wishes and a longing deep inside your soul.
There are struggles on this journey, though they are no longer ones brought about by illusion. They are real and they are Now, but when you are in alignment with them, all you see is the adventure. You charge ahead with adrenaline coursing through your veins and an enthusiasm that can only be experienced when joy meets goal.
Life is energy. Form is energy. Thought is energy. Emotion is energy. “You” is energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Energy is recycled over and over throughout the creative process of manifestation and dissolution.
Can’t you see how ludicrous all this suffering is that we create for ourselves? Thoughts twist those emotions by creating a story about them that we then call feelings. We feel unhappy, we feel alone, we feel misunderstood, we feel unloved: but really it’s all just energy. Energy twisting energy by an energy-based entity. All because we have the ability of reflective thought, made possible by a dramatic leap of evolution, that allows us to churn that energy through our minds and bodies.
Sometimes it’s thoughts that spark the emotion, other times it’s the emotion that triggers thought. Either way, once the cycle gets going, without awareness it’s impossible to pull the plug on it until it’s run it’s course. And the things that we say and do while under the influence of such toxic pathology undermines our ability to trust or be trusted. From that place of total absorption in thought and reaction and fear, it’s all but impossible to see it as simply an overdose of energy.
But with practice, we can begin to stem the tide. As we set in place reminders to awaken from those thoughts that consume us, we avail ourselves to discover that original self who has been carrying us all this time. For the first time, we are able to allow that original self to emerge and take the helm. We tap into a wealth of inspirations to focus our energy on, and we come at those tasks from a place of empowerment. Letting go of one dream makes room for a new one to arise in its place. And this original self has such an amazing dream, far more fascinating than any the mind could create.
Was the purpose of that evolutionary leap simply to allow us to create mind-made entities that drive us deep into unhappiness? Or is that just a symptom, a byproduct, of something more spectacular? Maybe, just maybe, that mind-made entity that creates so much angst, was an essential part of the journey leading us to awaken from it. Upon awakening, we are now free to use that self in service to the life that we are instead of continuing to use it in service to the madness of our mind-made self.
At least that’s been my experience. I’d love to hear your thoughts on all this…
Always Surrender!
“Surrender” is a challenging concept to bring up because it tends to trigger a lot of resistance. But there is an alternate view of surrender that I would like to share in the hope of revealing the healing and empowerment that this otherwise rigid contains.
Most often, “surrender” stirs up feelings and images of giving up yourself and your power to another, yielding, or admitting defeat. The battle cry “Never Surrender!” rings in my ears. It is a closing off and pushing back from the enemy, even when the enemy is a situation and not a person. It resonates with deep resistance, at the center of which is fear. But fear cannot fight fear and win without causing other things to be afraid of. An imposing force, if resisted, may or may not be momentarily overcome, but any apparent victory will contain within it the seeds for its defeat at a future time. If we look to nature, the tree that moves and sways with the strong gusts of wind has the surest chance to grow and thrive where the rigid inflexible tree will snap in two.
From my experience, surrender held the key to my ultimate empowerment. It was my willingness to let go of my wants and needs that diffused the resistance to what was happening in my life. In place of that resistance came a sense of peace and stillness. Instead of fighting and struggling to be heard or seen, I became very fluid, wrapping myself around the situations rather than trying to wrap them around me. I wasn’t surrendering myself to others, I was just calling a temporary cease-fire so I could see if the war I was fighting was even still going on.
That experience of peace created an opening, and I began to see things in my surroundings that I just couldn’t see before. I followed these clues with a playful curiosity, and they revealed to me a loophole in life that, when realized, released me from the need to resist anything. I wasn’t afraid anymore, and those fears that had held me so tight were revealed as having their roots in childhood when, in a very real way, they were very real fears. But I wasn’t that child anymore, and so I could let go of those fears that caused me to misinterpret so many of the situations in my life.
In a sense, I surrendered to the life that I am, and I became one with life again. Now instead of fighting the “current” out of fear that I will be taken out to sea and drown, I ride the waves and allow them to carry me to my destination. I operate now from a place of deep responsibility, and instead of fear being my motivating factor, I experience compassion and love beyond anything I can even express. It has freed up so much energy that I am able to share with the world.
Through surrender, we are transported to a platform of peace. From there, we can see the root cause of the suffering around us and are empowered to take the necessary steps to remedy that cause rather than waste energy on mitigating the symptoms. In my willingness to let go of my limited wants and needs, I became more fully myself.
I cultivate this realization each day by finding a few brief moments to surrender my wants and needs to those of life. And regardless of how grand or small the gesture, I am inevitably left feeling more energized and more peaceful. Those gestures help create the space necessary to allow awareness to surface in those other moments of the day when I feel myself beginning to resist. It’s those moments that I now realize are simply being offered as a chance for me to practice peace. As I go about my days, the battle cry “Always Surrender!” helps transport me to a platform of peace, and allows me to face any situation with strength instead of fear.