In ancient times when the sun set on the Winter Solstice, creating the entrance into the longest night of the year, rituals and prayers were given in awe to honor the light and prepare for the darkness that followed. At a heart level the people had no certainty the sun would rise again, and when it did the next morning, it was a cause for immense celebration, for the sun was the source of life.

Now we know it will rise. We seldom take time to feel awe. The natural world continues without much of our attention. Yet it is the natural world that sustains us, not our technology, not our hectic pace, not our politics or money or wanting of this or that.

In our own corner of the Universe we are given a bounty beyond measure. In the sound of the wind, in the call of a bird, in the fleeting sight of an animal crossing a meadow, in a child’s laugh, we are in a sacred place whether we acknowledge it or not.

On this particular day, as the sun sets, take note of it, if you will. Stop whatever you are doing and thinking for just a moment, and give thanks to the sun, a prayer for its return, and a welcoming of the long night with the anticipation and hope for a new day.

In this way we align with the ancient ones who understood we are not separate from the natural world, but in our own corner of the Universe we are embedded in it, a part of the whole, an abiding and deep and vital part of All That Is.

Angels in the Snow and Rain

We get chances, opportunities for clarity about our path, and they come to us again and again until we see them for what they are and take hold of their wisdom — and there are angels among us who help in this by showing up with a map into our inner awareness. Eventually and at last we awaken to those opportunities — some might say, in the nick of time.

But what about these angels? How do we know if we’ve met one?

We usually don’t until later, often not until they’re gone. It’s more than likely they share our space and life for just a short duration, yet in that time we are in some way transformed.

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In the Ho’oponopono tradition as described by Dr. Hew Len, it is a sign of emotional freedom when we cease judging others for any reason at any time. We experience this by degrees of awareness, and often fall back on old habits, but if we are aware of making judgments, that is already a sign of freedom coming into place.

Dr. Len has observed that he has not achieved total freedom in this. Like others on a similar path, including the great teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, he lives with a great honesty of purpose and recognition about his own actions. Complete freedom from judgement is the way of Jesus Christ, of the Buddha, of the Tao.

But what do we judge if we are not aware? How often? It is really beneficial to track this, if you are willing, FOR JUST ONE DAY.

People judge each other on first sight, whether it be someone we are introduced to or someone we see on the street. A flash of judgment streaks through our mind about how the person looks, what they are wearing, how they behave, how they walk, the color of their clothes, the sound of their voice, their attitude, who they are with, their role in life, their job or lack thereof, their status financially, their marital state, their children, their hobbies, how much television they watch, their taste in movies, books, food, environments, subjects, their political preference…the list is extensive.

Almost endless…

So here is a way to discern how often you judge others, if that draws your interest: Have a piece of paper or a small notebook and pen near at hand. Every time you have a thought that is not positive toward someone (this is the definition of feeling judgment), for any reason, place a tick on that page. Try to do this for one whole day–or at least for seven hours. At the end of the day, count the number of ticks you placed.

It is likely the number is large. But one thing is certain–even after doing this exercise just once–you will never be able to feel judgment again without being aware you are doing so.

Another thing you can do in addition is gauge how deep a particular instant judgment is on a scale of 1-10 and put it beside the tick mark. This can be a game-changer.

Depending on your outcome and response, you may want to do this again, and see if there is a difference the next day or the next week.

Now, you might ask why bother or even say so what. There is an easy answer for that. Every strong emotion uses our energy, and fast. Positive emotions regenerate us. Negative emotions drain us.

So it matters what we choose to do. It matters how aware we want to be. And there is one more thing that matters:

Being conscious of who we are and what we feel in this very moment is freedom.

Humans spend an inordinate amount of time wondering about their life purpose, often feeling that unless they can figure that out, they are not living fully AND may not be living rightfully. It is as if certain conditions must be met that make our presence legitimate and without those conditions being met, we feel restless and uncertain and often, unworthy.

The thing is, those “certain conditions” are artificial. We make them up as we go along and they change according to our age and life circumstances — but they are our construct, our interpretation of reality. And they miss the point.

We don’t have to do anything. We don’t have to emulate anyone else or wish for another’s achievement, or for what anyone else has. We don’t need to do any of that, ever.

Every life is a precious jewel. No exceptions. We are enough just as we are.

This is one reason the sages always advise us to live without judgment, for in truth everyone we meet is a soul made in the image of God. Our life is about aligning our human self with our soul truth — and that is it. That is everything there is to know. How?

If you are doing work you love, you are aligned that way.

If you are touched by the call of a bird at dawn, you are aligned.

If you find joy watching a field at night that is filled with fireflies, you are aligned.

If you have a pet you love, you are aligned.

If you take delight in something joyful, you are aligned.

If you feel love even for those people you don’t like, you are aligned.

If you realize you are here in the image of God, you are aligned.

If you honor who you are right now, this instant, you are aligned, and the rest of life is ready to unfold before you in the best possible way. Why? Because you are living from the heart, which is aligned with Spirit. How? You let your heart be the primary guide for everything.

It holds the diamond light that is you.

Often, so often, we experience shifts in our everyday life, shifts of emotions, of intentions, of actions–all the while listening to the inner commentator, that insistent critic who evaluates everything, usually without offering us much mercy or compassion. Left to its own devices that critic takes over, and nothing we do escapes judgment–which of course means nothing anyone else does escapes judgment, either.

We resist this critic, but in fact half or wholly believe in what it says to us, so our resistance, in Borg terms, is futile.

Yet the truth is when all of that is going on–it is our life that’s going on! We are riding the waves of our heart and mind and spirit, with one dominant at any given moment, but all three involved, all the time.

What does that mean?

It means these are the rhythms of who we are and what our life is about–the shifts, the alternations in feelings and thoughts that come according to what we give our attention to. Our life is really a matter of attention and inattention–which is what creates the waves for us, the rising and sinking, the ebb and flow, the twists and turns, the sudden revelations or inspirations. Above all, it gives us access to the full awareness that we exist. It gives this access to us rightfully and joyfully, no matter what happens.

Most people operate during the day on an autopilot when it comes to awareness of their own life,  unless the inner critic is part and parcel of that awareness. But there is another way.

Awareness can exist without the inner critic. It is possible to simply observe what is going on with us without judgment. The feelings and thoughts will pass, change, alter, move on, or stop–nothing stays for very long. We can sense their rise and fall each moment or minute or hour or day and let it be as it is.

When we allow the rhythms of our life to exist of their own accord, we are recognizing they are who we are–a fantastically creative panoply of all we do and think and experience and feel.

You are here to thrive in the unique essence of who you are. You were born in God’s grace. Everything good is intended for you. This is true at all levels of your being — emotional, spiritual, intellectual, psychological, mental, and practical. You are as unique as a snowflake, for no one like you will ever exist again exactly the same way.

So What Seems to Go Wrong, to Our Way of Thinking?

Somewhere along the line most of us picked up a different story, and for reasons mysterious and unwarranted, we believed it — that we were not worthy, that we had to doubt ourselves, that we were not loved.

The negativity we buy into informs us to one degree or another, in one endeavor or another, that we have less value.

Misconceptions

Such thinking and feeling derives from misconceptions, of which there are many. But these three seem to flourish more than others.

• You believe what others think of you matters, even when they put you down.
• You feel you must please others even when it defies your own sense of well-being.
• You don’t trust in who you are.
  

Most people spend more time in inner criticism than they do in thinking positively about themselves — in a ratio of 80% to 20%. Even high achievers will do this. Even people who have done good works for humanity will doubt they have value. Artists and composers and successful entrepreneurs — the same story. As if they all had won the prize of success by fooling their audiences.

But self-criticism is not virtue. You deserve to thrive in joy, valuing who you are. There is no doubt of this.

How We Compensate

Someone said to me that it was wrong to boast about what they had done. I would probably agree that it is not the best way to proceed, for it rarely is done to share joy but to cover up insecurities.

But I am not thinking of that aspect so much as what happens to people when they do not trust their own right to become all that they can be — when they censor themselves out of fear, or assume the patterns of the past are fixed.

It is a truth that change is the only constant. There is always a chance to do things differently. There is always a way to alter the path you are on and move into something that matters to you.

Telling the Story

I wrote a post a while back called “The Stories We Tell Ourselves.” The thing is, the story we tell ourselves IS the one we believe, even if it’s wrong. It is a form of hypnosis we achieve so well because we tell ourselves this story many times a day.

Changing the story is not easy — but it is the best thing you can do for yourself. It is a process ongoing, as you learn and make adjustments and choose your path. External events can affect you so fast and so much. You need to give yourself space to let go of reflex actions and responses triggered by that inner hypnosis.

Shedding the Reaction

We are human, we are going to react, and we must feel what we feel. But let the negative feeling exist only for a split second. After that, shed it like a snake’s skin.

The negative opinion of others is not something we are meant to own and keep. We might learn something new, but we cannot thrive on such opinions. They do not belong to us.

Instead, we are meant to acknowledge the dance of life, the choreography of all that happens to us, whatever it is, and choose how we want to be from then on.

How?

Believe in the power that is within you…

Believe in the song that sings inside you…

Believe in your right to do and be…

It is your birthright.

You, in your human form, are the precious, tangible evocation of Spirit.

You are meant to thrive.

Eye of a Hurricane

In hurricanes, the eye is characterized by light winds and clear skies, surrounded on all sides by a towering, symmetrical eyewall. Storm chasers who fly across its diameter, which can be up to thirty miles across, describe the feeling of peace the eye holds in the midst of the absolute chaos of lightning and thunder and category winds. The sun or stars can be visible for a time. The fierce tropical storm rotates around the eyewall, leaving the exact center, the eye itself, calm.

In much the same way, a raging storm at sea lies only on its surface. Far beneath, on the ocean floor, the pearl takes its time forming in the oyster that, surrounded by calm currents, is unconcerned with the chaos above.

Our Human Response to Chaos

In our human state, we are alert to chaos, and sense it in our world to some degree every day. Some of this reaction derives from our ancient self, our primitive response to danger. Yet that response was formed at a time when physical survival required such diligence. Our modern world is not free of potential danger, but for most of us, the day does not bring the threat that we cannot physically survive.

No. The alertness we experience is emotional and psychological stress because we are afraid — every day — that something in our world is not going the way we want it to, or think it should, or else is hammering at our sense of well-being.

We Choose What We Feel

We tend to forget that every response we have, every reaction, is personal. Whether it is the best response or not is not in question so much as why we forget it is a personal emotion we feel. We think it is outside of us — something outside of us making us feel at odds with life and with ourselves. It never is. We choose what we feel, though often we do so unconsciously.

So what, we might ask? The feeling is real enough. So it is. Yet, what if we decided, deliberately, to choose to feel calm no matter what is going on? How would that change us, and possibly the situation?

How to Stop the Fear of Chaos

When something goes through your mind that brings with it a feeling of chaos — an uncertainty and dismay — there is a way to stop the stressful reaction very quickly.

In that moment, enter the stillness that lies always at the center of your being. You are never without it. It is the God-force in you always present whether acknowledged or not. It is always available to you. You are ONE with it. When you enter that stillness everything changes.

You let go of personal reaction and response, and see with a wider vision what is going on, and find then, in its truest form, the action that serves best not only you, but life.

Each of Us Has a Place in God’s House

These words from the Book of John tell us we are not alone. Each one of us is entitled to a place, a life of our own, and yet we are connected together in the consolation and caring vibration of God. We are forever in God’s house.

These are mansions of the soul. Each of us is a soul experiencing the energy of the universe, living in the image of God, and living for a little while on this complicated, precious Earth.

The concept of separation is an illusion. Even our scientists admit this, that everything is interconnected by what they call a zero point field—that we exist in multiple dimensions at once, that time and space are artificial, and that NOTHING exists apart from this—that to think anything is separate is to describe the impossible. They know this now, but our mystics and wise men and women have known it for millennia.

Yet we live day to day as if our world is separate from everyone else’s. It’s true, our individual experience is different, one from the other. But our connection stands with us, powered in a hidden form, but there. When we think or feel that something vital is missing, every part of us—body, mind, and spirit–are negatively affected. The sense we have lost connection is in fact our greatest fear, because we KNOW in our deepest self its presence and power are what sustain us.

The Truth Is…

In truth the only thing missing is our embrace of ourselves as evidence of God in every moment. We can stand aside and claim that for others, but too often we seem unable to do this for ourselves. Everything that brings us despair or anxiety comes from not having faith that we matter.

The truth lies in knowing we are never alone, and realizing that we are indeed here for a reason—as the manifestation of the infinite, expanding creativity of God. No matter what we do or how we act and think, that truth does not alter. We are blessed by God before we take our first breath. We are blessed at the moment of conception.

We make choices that do not seem to serve us, but those choices eventually bring us the very awareness and the learning that we need most. This life on Earth is a school, if you like, for the spirit, but one in which we are not judged or categorized in any way. The larger picture is not ours to know, but this much we can trust–we ARE created out of the very image of the divine, and as souls in human form we always reside in God’s house–as surely as you take a breath now.

The Consciousness of Light

The Christ Consciousness is a transformative power. The American prophet Edgar Cayce said this in a reading:

Question: What is the main purpose of this incarnation?
Answer: To glorify the Christ Consciousness in the earth — in the lives of those with whom ye come in contact, and to live the same thyself.
— Edgar Cayce Reading 2441-4

The Pattern of the Christ

The pattern of the Christ as we apply it in our lives reveals our awareness, our consciousness, of what it means to give service to God by how we treat those who cross our path. It registers at our deepest inner being, the heart of who we are. Cayce described this Christ pattern as the evidence of the oneness we have with God, for it gives us a way to enter a higher frequency of perception, and so accelerates our ability to feel compassion, to live with patience, and to offer kindness and love no matter what is going on.

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A dear friend of mine, Preeti Agnani, listened to me rail and rant about the election results and then she said to me “We all are powerful vibrational beings.” Her message went on to describe how we choose the emotions we experience. I knew this intellectually, but it was not working so well in my heart. I could not understand what to me seemed so disastrous an outcome. Then she said the Master Planner knows all, and would not let something happen that did not benefit humanity and this earth.

She is right. And in that moment, all my rage ended, my anger evaporated, my judgment of those who had voted for the winner disappeared. My next thought was that I could no more understand what had happened than could the birds in flight or the trees shedding their leaves, but then it occurred to me the trees and the birds very likely understood the vitality of life far better than I did. They had absolute faith that their presence and anything that happened to them was intended, and an act of grace.

In the end, in the larger picture we as yet cannot see, there is a plan of great purpose and it is one formed and extended out to us by this Master Planner. We are never left bereft–we only think we are, which is what brings to us the overwhelming feeling of despair, regret, and powerlessness, such as I felt. Yet these negative feelings are not our birthright. Our birthright is freedom. We are meant to feel inner freedom no matter what happens around us.

Mirrors of Our Intentions

Events are mirrors for us–opportunities to see more clearly, and to choose our way, instead of reacting to what appears so overwhelming in the moment. We are meant to thrive in the world, in our lives, in our whole being. We make a mistake if we think anything external to ourselves can stop our capacity to feel joy at any time. It is always there for us.

I have spent a lifetime learning such ideas and ideals, yet until now I did not fully absorb the validity of how we are meant to live, to AGREE, no matter what, that we had this  freedom of choice. The catalyst for me was the shock I felt at the election outcome, a feeling that was more traumatic than 9/11, because it signaled a vast division and separation in my country–and in me. I had no idea how to move forward. I was choosing every hour–every minute–to stay inside that sense of utter futility. There seemed no way out of it.

Yet it was STILL an ongoing matter of personal choice to accept that state or to change it. In every moment I continued to have the freedom to choose my course and mindset and emotions.  I had only to look into what was and is, accept that what happened had its own trajectory, one that did not belong to me directly, and allow my own path to unfold again.

I have always loved the biblical verse from 1 Corinthians 13:12:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

I will never choose again to enter that feeling of despair and outrage. I know its source–I know it grew out of an immense caring for others and this world–but the feeling that manifested of despair and outrage served no purpose–brought no relief–changed nothing.

Let It Go

The truth is we can only change ourselves. We do this by allowing the feeling of being overwhelmed to exist–it is our human aspect, after all, to feel emotions–but to give it the briefest duration, and then let it go. Emotions are not intended physiologically to endure. As I wrote in an earlier post–every emotion has a life span of 90 seconds at the cellular level. This is confirmed by science. When we let go of a negative emotion, we stop circling in an endless loop, in the lost and helpless state of mind and heart that overtakes us. When we allow positive feelings, they are signaled by light in the cell. This is true of all living things–like the kirlian photograph of a leaf shown above.

We drop that negative emotion as if it is a stone heated in a fire and placed in our hands. We let go of anything that brings us down, that makes us feel powerless. We say instead what my friend Preeti said, that we are powerful vibrational beings who can send ripples out into the world and effect the changes that matter to us. We do this by focusing on our own gifts, our own caring, our own compassion.

Another Way

I often consider this verse in my posts, from 1 Timothy 4:14:

“Do not neglect the gift that is in you.”

When we yield to despair, to feeling helpless, to being overwhelmed–when we let these emotions stay with us–there is no way our inherent, innate, creative,  and unique gifts can be expressed. They are instead shadowed and crowded out by grief, by anger, by sadness, and by fear of what will come. Far better that we allow into our heart and mind the joy that does belong to us, the peace that is always within us–that we can ask to meet in silence–and the awareness of our extraordinary spirit.

For we are indeed spiritual beings having a human experience. And we are meant to honor that by the compassion, joy, and creative force we bring to every moment. That is our power.

We are intended to be here. We are an act of grace.