Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Northern Exposure

So after two and a half years of traveling in the RV, we have finally landed!

We've been in Redding, CA for just over two months now. Weekly raw food meetings started about five weeks ago and is going strong. Workshops on raw and living food are coming up in August. A seva job opened to manage the bookstore at the spiritual center we've been so openly welcomed to. I'll be playing music for services there. The area is beautiful!

A new phase, a new chapter, a new beginning. And, a place to park it for a while!!


Tuesday, May 4, 2010

A New Space

After leaving Palm Desert we are back in a park we have frequented many times over the last two and a half years of our full time RV life. The wild thing is, this is the first time I've been on this side of the park, which is the side next to a small stream. At this moment there is a white bird with skinny legs, and what look to be yellow feet, wading his way up the far side of the waterway. Geese, ducks, even swan have been parading across my little RV window in the last few hours.

And, I have to wonder, where have I been? Huddled like a creature of habit all this time in the back rows, just because it was a no brainer navigational accomplishment to drive straight ahead to the rear? One would think after the "accidentally driving through San Francisco initiation" early on in our RV travels, I would have been sufficiently confident in my 32 foot while towing a car RV driving abilities to make it through anything. But no....

I also have to wonder if this little shift in real estate has to do with the talk I gave this weekend at a women's conference via UCI's integrative medicine clinic. It was a talk on raw food, and I had been asked to give a very basic talk on the benefits of raw food on health. 'Don't mess with people's (animal) protein,' I was told. Don't bring in the environmental or ethical elements of food. Just the basics.
I wondered if it was in fact in integrity for me to leave so much of the important things out.....and after asking inside, got a strong yes to go ahead with the talk.....

It was shocking when I then found myself talking to this group about the spiritual opening that had occurred spontaneously many years ago and searching for a way of eating that supported that high energy awareness!! I honestly didn't have an intention of going there, and had really surrendered to the fact that a basic raw food talk was what would most benefit this particular group. But, what I later realized, is that the collective group had an intention all of it's own.
This was really the first time that I became so strongly aware of the power of the group to pull energy and information through me....not that it hadn't been happening. But, I hadn't been so totally aware of it in the moment. It was amazing, and liberating~ and it definitely was not huddling like a creature of habit at the back. It was full front and center. Holding nothing back. It was also a little like sitting on the edge of a small stream watching lovely birds parade on by....

Monday, April 26, 2010

Taking a 'Day On' for a Change

In my last post I stumbled upon an insight while writing- love when that happens! - and wanted to explore the idea further.

It's the whole concept of 'taking a day off', and the awareness that came after a spiritual opening many years ago, that from that moment on I would never have a 'day off' again. The only intention was to stay wake to that awareness, to serve it, to share it, to be it!!! No time off, no day off!! Eghads!
I remember feeling that this was horrible news to the ego, and wildly wonderful news to the soul.

Once we truly have a day on, in the highest sense of the term, it will be difficult to have a day off. Once you find why you are here, once you tap into your true love and joy, your mission of service, you will not need to try to escape from work with days off. This is because work will no longer be work, work will be joy, work will be bliss. So, it would then be like trying to take a day off from joy and bliss.

Work will no longer involve a personality self punching a time clock, in order to make money to pay bills. It will involve dimensions of yourself that came with specific tasks and gifts to share with the world.
You will become aware of everything that comes into your field of vision. The whole world will begin to speak to you in riddles and rhymes, and sometimes directly to your heart. It won't be as easy to pretend that you don't see what you see. Or pretend to feel what you don't feel. You won't be able to act like you are not here for a divine purpose.

Taking a day off from this context would become meaningless in a sense. What would it mean then? It would mean ignoring your soul's guidance for a day? Not wanting to do your practice or work which brings you joy? Disconnect from your purpose? Would taking a day off mean sinking into a state of illusion and fear and negativity again?

Once you discover your true Self it seems you will never want a day off again. There will be no separation from your work life from your personal life from your life life. There is no separation between your work life and your life life- and in Truth no personal life- all of this is discovered in a moment of clarity and awakening of the soul. So, it's not so much that all of this will change in the universal fabric.... nothing will change in the Universe, in the Universe there is no such thing as a day off, or for that matter a day on, you will just become aware of what has always been.

This is not to say rest and relaxation will no longer be required, but in an awakened state of awareness rest and relaxation are a given. Exercise, fresh air, good nutritious food~ one gravitates towards these things even more when one is taking a 'day on'... when one is awake this is a great place to be and taking care of the body would probably become a much higher priority for the sake of having a temple to live in, love from, and share with!!

What you will be aware of is how important it is to stay awake. As the mystic poet Rumi said, "Don't go back to sleep." Even in your physical sleep you will find yourself more awake, more active and having a day on, rather that falling back asleep, caught in the illusion of a projected state of awareness of limiting beliefs, creating nightmares for yourself, constantly trying to take a day off. Who of us would want a day off from heaven, joy, bliss, beauty, love, freedom, wonder and peace?

There's something that has been so deeply ingrained into our collective consciousness that work is hard or boring or something that just pays the bills, and the more time we can get off from this work, the better. Not to say that there are aspects of things here that you would not like to do- but- why would you create things for yourself to do that you don't enjoy doing? Even in this there is a quality of our eternal soul or a deeper awareness that is attempting to emerge in our consciousness. Trying to avoid things, we end up avoiding Life, Love, Beauty, Joy. Trying to find ways to have more days off, or, live in a state of mind looking forward to our 'days off' we completely miss all of the opportunities for Grace and Enthusiasm and Fun our days on!!

There is a warning here, though. Once you feel the freedom of life running through your soul, once you touch the space of grace within you and begin to walk through life in days on.... no more looking for days off.... you will no longer be satisfied with days off... you will only desire days on, only want to share, only want to love..... and everything in you that is not of those vibrations, all of those parts within looking for days off will surface to be healed... then, you really won't want to take a day off... you'll want to work to consistently and consciously clear all of that stuff out so you can get back to a day on again!! Recognizing of course, in Reality, there are no days off, ever. Not really :)

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Perfect Inaction in Action

A quote that has most inspired me is one by Lao Tzu:
To he that practices perfect inaction, to him all things are possible.
And, for the feminine gendered:
To she that practices perfect inaction, to her all things are possible.
And, for a neutral, omnipresent version:
To one who practices perfect inaction, to them all things are possible.

However it is quoted, the meaning is the same. And yet, the meaning isn't as obvious as one might first assume. I once posted this quote as my facebook status and received a comment that read something to the effect, "Yes, I have the day off, I can practice perfect inaction today too."
I remembered thinking....hmmm.....do we really need a day off to practice inaction? Or, for that matter to practice at all? It's usually we get the most practice on a 'day on' rather than a 'day off'. To stay present to the moment in the midst of our daily activities, and especially in stressful situations. This is the real practice. After an awakening point many years ago I remember reflecting afterward with simultaneous joy as well as undeserved loss that I would never have a 'day off' again.

As we can probably gather by now, perfect inaction isn't practicing being perfectly still at the level of form. It's not plopping down in front of the TV with a carton of bon-bon's, either. How I see it, perfect inaction is allowing the flow of divine energy, with neither resistance to, or forced expression, of. It is not a response impeded by the conditioned mind, limited patterns of the past, the ego, the personality or false self. It is an effortless beingness without the intrusion of consideration from that limited sense of self, or from the unconscious manifestation of limited patterns. You could say living perfect inaction is not human, or, you could say it is the ultimate human. However you say it, you might discover, it is beyond description using words and thoughts alone since it is not encumbered by these tools of communication or creation. It is not something that can be learned, but can only come from the unlearning of untruths- about oneself and about life. It is the natural and organic. It is the true song of one's soul, the song that does not need to be literally sung to be heard and appreciated.

There have always been tendencies in spiritual traditions to use God, or Gods, to create change, and from this awareness the word create can be used interchangeably with force. Even though creating positive changes- either through focused prayer or vision boards- are not at all a bad practices, it would be helpful to be acknowledged that they are not on the same vibrational level of Thy will be done. They are in a level of personal experimentation, personal creation for the benefit of learning and growing in awareness of right and wrong, good and bad, undoing of karma, but, even in an intention of doing good for the whole, still at a level of personal intention and directed thought and outcome. No matter how 'good' this creation is, it was still created in a field of the idea or understanding that there was such a thing as 'bad' or 'good', and therefore on a level of duality and separation. It was still created for an idea or ideal one held rather that in the field beyond thought. Rather than perfect inaction. Rather than 'as God'.

The enlightened hold no specific thought because thought is not vibrating at a high enough vibration to pray within and create from. The level in which thought exists is a level of a limited dimension of awareness. Creating from a consciousness which exists in duality is creating from a limited state of awareness and to create from this awareness is to create from a state of limitation.
I have heard some say you have to tell God what you want, otherwise He won't be able to give it to you. This only makes sense to someone who does not know God, but who is a separate entity 'thinking about' God and who creates, or forces, from the dimension of thought, or, duality.

True Creation can only be seen and allowed into the physical through perfect inaction, and in essence is not 'creation' at all in terms of how we usually think of 'someone' creating 'something'. It is an act of non-resistance, perfect, inaction on 'our' behalf. Rather than co-creation (God is my co-pilot), there is only Creation, (one of us in the cockpit). Rather than someone saying and feeling, look what I created, they would only be able to say, look what has always been there, look what I found, look what I allowed through my loss of mental agenda and idea (mind). Look what I got out of the way of. Look what happened when I no longer wished for (forced) anything, and when I stopped resisting (doubting or judging) what was Here. It's not that mind is the enemy or anything. It can help you drive a car. It can balance a checkbook. It can make clever remarks and force change. If you think about it though, it can't do anything really life-changingly brilliantly genius though. Of course, you mind might not want you to think about it, and if you listen to what it tells you all of the time, you won't be able to think about things like that, and, again, you will be stuck in vision board creation limbo.

Inaction can also apply to the difference between talent and genius. You might start with talent, but if you get attached to being talented and 'good', 'right and wrong' you never get to genius. You end up stuck at a low level performance. Perfect inaction is what happens when you stop trying and when you stop thinking. You can trust that when you have the courage to turn off your mind, to stop thinking, to stop planning, to allow no thinking space to be present, to let go of all of your worldly goals and desires and attachments to what you want to happen, you will not end. You will not cease to exist, but what will happen is you will allow for the space for the eternal presence of who you really are. Only from this space and this awareness are we able to truly "inact".

After spending the last decade in the Los Angeles area, I was often confused when I would find myself in a 'large' energy field; one of a booming voice, powerful presence, clever quips, smiles, excitement abound~ I say I was confused because something inside of me would pick up something different than what was being projected. Often confidence gets translated as manipulating the field of energy in the room to one's advantage, or, sometimes even, speaking the loudest and therefore, the most 'confidently'. I would look at what I was seeing, feel the energy that was being projected by this person, (which I realize now was most likely created by an intention to impress, or to win friends, or, to be good, or great, or genius, to live their passion, etc. etc.....an energy created by ANY intention coming from the mental realm), then feeling the energy that was not being projected on the outside, but which was truly present and hidden away on the inside that had not been worked through. It wasn't a match. It was an act. And, should one really expect anything different from a town full of actors? At later times I would be told by these people how they felt like frauds on the outside, how they were stuck, depressed, etc. etc. and I would always be surprised, and, not surprised if you know what I mean . This was an act that I bought into by the dozen, and, with an open energy empathic field, finally discovered my very effective unconscious ability to take on the hidden, negative energy that was being 'shouted over'. And, in a flow of perfect inaction grace, was led to a teacher that is helping me to stop taking on all of it. The flow is quite wonderful.... so different than any personal desire or thought, any personal wish.... to live in inaction is the thing we are all secretly desiring without knowing it is what we are.

From a higher frequency one is able to drop personal agendas and preferences, even 'positive' ones, and is no longer under the illusion that they are co-creating anything, but simply watching creations create themselves- at that point one will no longer interfere with Creation but 'inact' with it. Not interact with it, for one does not exist apart from it, but, merely inact with it. Like a canoe flowing down a swift river, the sensory illusion is that the canoe and the stream are separate, the Truth is, they are One.



Thursday, April 22, 2010

And so it begins.....

After the closing of Gaia.com which I had posting on for the last few years I took it as a sign to start from scratch.... to really sit with what I wanted a blog to be, what would be relevant and interesting. I've so many stories to share, living in an RV full time for the last few years, and, beyond the obvious adventure, it's the spiritual adventure that has been the most compelling and amazing to me~

In the weeks and months to come, I'm intending to post regular discoveries and experiences, on the outer road, and the inner road, all related to living beyond belief~ the name of my book. www.livingbeyondbelief.com

The intention is to post fun, entertaining, humorous, as well as life changing, information on how to not only keep our head above water, but how to soar with those eagles!!

Here's to the adventure ahead!!