Suffering is Optional The Untouchable You We have all had our struggles. Some more painful than others. We all have had our own paths to walk. Sometimes it seems like a soul will choose a life path loaded with, often severe, personal challenges, perhaps to ensure there would be an awakening. For many of us, is has been over the last few years that our lives got turned upside down. Where everything we thought life would bring us, is perhaps lost forever. We can avoid the possibility of pain as well. How many of us have had our hearts broken. Perhaps crushed. And now we just don’t want to go “there” ever again. It is the pain itself, or the possibility of pain, that can freeze us in our tracks. Perhaps the memory of painful events. Our personal history is loaded up with intense events from our past. Some are…
Play the hand you have been dealt Blossom where you are planted I find it quite curious how some of the most powerful people I have interviewed have had some of the toughest life lessons. There is a notion that says our Soul chooses our life path, at least initially, before we incarnate. A theme, if you will, for our life. With, perhaps, a primary theme, and then, perhaps, multiple secondary themes. A primary theme might be to learn how to hold compassion for another. Or perhaps forgiveness. And then we are born. The idea of free will, where we can choose to honor our life purpose, or we can choose to ignore it, is what decides what will actually happen. When you hold space for others, there is something that happens you might not expect. I had hosted a men’s group for several years. It always amazed me what…
The Winds of Change are Blowing Time to adjust the sails What a time to be alive, eh? I know not everyone sees these times as a “positive.” There has been so much change over the last few years. And with it has come many struggles and challenges of all sorts. How is it that we can navigate so much change, and still come out with our sanity? It might depend on “You.” Who are “You?” I know it is a simple question, but the “You” I am referring to is who you know yourself to be. In other words, if I were to ask you to list who you were, in a list of titles, what would you write? You might write … I am an engineer, husband, father, spiritual author, etc. The more I am “vested” in those labels, the more “pain” I will feel if those aspects…
Eat the Ice Cream We are here for the Human experience. What is it like to live life as a human BEing? Life is short … eat the ice cream. Ok, I know if all we do is eat ice cream, then perhaps our life would be short(er). ;- ) But there is a richness that is missed by millions and perhaps billions of people. Although it is available to all, our collective societies have some built-in stigmas. Perhaps not ALL cultures, but certainly in the Western mindsets. There is a temporal expansion. An elongating of life that really doesn’t serve us. If I were to use a metaphor, imagine a jet ski and a supertanker. A jet ski is nimble and quick. Changing direction, speed and outcomes in a moment. Whereas the supertanker is so big, it might take an hour to turn around, and it would need a…
Breaking into the Open Karma is not a forever thingy There is a factor to karma, that I think goes overlooked. The curious thing is that we have been through, collectively, such huge karmic events. Events that have touched generation after generation. At a very deep level. If you look at war, for example, PTSD can cripple a person. Devastate them. Crush their ability to function in the world at all. Collapse their ability to process emotions. To the point of either wrestling with the horror of their memories, or perhaps, the opposite end of the spectrum of feeling numb. Or when entire countries go through a deep financial depression. Scarring those people for generations to come. My father went through those days, and he was the co-fabricator of my ego, along with my mother. Teaching me how I would end up thinking. If you are walking around on planet…
Stand Solid through the Chaos Weathering the storm These times … they are a changing. ~ Unknown One of the more common ways we lose our way, is when we take in information and then base our life on this information. I know we are constantly bombarded with information. But when we take it in, and make it our own, that is when we put our power behind it. Whatever it is. You cannot lose your power “somewhere else.” In other words, when we lose our power, it doesn’t “leave” us. It gets fragmented within us. You are always in 100 percent control over your power. It is never anything “out there” that is holding your power. It might not seem to us that we are always holding our power. This is due to our soul’s decision to fragment ourselves into seemingly less powerful archetypes. In order to live out…
Our Emotional Struggles are really a Mental problem Our Emotions, themselves, are an impersonal thing One of the things that makes change more of a challenge, can be our emotions. We can get into a stuck repetitive cycle with our emotions. But the emotions themselves are a very natural and indifferent phenomenon. You could think of getting stuck in emotional re-actions, like yelling the same phrase into “echo canyon,” expecting to hear something different. When we find a particular emotion getting stirred up, over and over again, we can think that it is the emotions themselves that are creating the problem. But our emotions are a natural response to our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitudes bumping up against “reality.” A response is caused by something. When there is a response, it is a result of something else. Just like the echo itself is like a response of the “echo canyon,”…
What would make You feel “Better”? Is there a feeling you are looking for? There is a bit of a back and forth. Once we get (more) focused on what we want. As part of the “awakening” process, you start paying more attention to your thoughts and feelings. You start to discern what you prefer, and what you don’t prefer. You start to “mind.” You start to pay attention to how you feel, doing those things that, perhaps, you have always done. To discover our subconscious habits that we have instilled in ourselves, we need to stretch ourselves. If we always avoid bad feelings, we are actually accumulating the karmic energy behind them. If we don’t ever get to the point of actually feeling them, they are taking more of a proverbial hold on us. It isn’t like we have to feel our bad feeling all the time, like it…
Your Karma isn’t personal. Don’t take it that way. Who are your teachers today? My boss was a malicious, and perhaps even evil, man. And he was my angel. He was, perhaps, one of my most important soul contracts in this lifetime. He put me on a shrink’s couch. He cracked me open. It wasn’t what he did TO me, as much as it was what he stirred up within me. I had a lot of anger in my subconscious. And I had no idea that it was there. None. He would stir that up, my anger, and I would go home every day feeling “upset.” Well, what was “upset?” It was my anger. My anger, had it not been upset over and over again, might have slowly pinched the life out of me. My body was shutting down. I had digestive tract issues for over a decade. And I…
Your Emotions evolve as You evolve There IS a promised land So … do you ever feel stuck? Kind of like … is this all there is? There is a thing about karma … a quagmire of sorts. As we, as timeless souls, load up our psyches with karma … everything slows down. You might even think of it kind of like temperature and water. Niagara Falls is a pretty impressive sight. So many tons of water, crashing on the rocks. But there are photographs of Niagara Falls frozen solid. An immense amount of power … frozen. Held “captive” by the cold temperature. That is kind of like our karma. Zap! Poof! Zang! Ka-Powee! When we completely cleanse our karma, out of our timeless persona, we will manifest in the moment. Jesus could manifest things out of thin air, in the moment. A very powerful persona. And he promised that…
Your Soul seeks growth. To grow. To evolve. Bend and Stretch For myself, I find it most curious that our egos have the final say in what we actually do. Well, at least for a while. There is a static effect when we live in our egos. Where our lives become static, or perhaps stagnant, and not dynamic. Our egos really want to know what is going to be the outcome of our decisions. Perhaps we have been burned before. Or, perhaps, our hearts have been broken. And we don’t want to feel THAT (ever) again. So we become very cautious with all of our decisions. Welcome to, perhaps, the most advanced karmic classroom in the galaxy. Planet Earth. If you can find the Light (of unconditional Love) at the core of your BEing, within this karmic tsunami, well, you just might be a badass angel. It can be challenging for sure. Very challenging.…