I Want Peace

Sometimes I run across a new posting that catches my eye enough to explore it further and then share it here. This one from Sister, I am with you  had me at  “..I also want Mexican food, but you know….”

It takes a decent sense of humor to survive through this strange ‘living-experience’ thing that we do, so Amy speaks for me here also. Give me Peace, …and Tacos!

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“The older I get the more I realize I want one thing in my life more than anything else:

Peace.

Well, maybe two things because I also want Mexican food, but you know.

I want peace.

I want friendships that aren’t fragile. I want relationships that aren’t volatile. I want people in my life where the connection between us isn’t delicate—where it isn’t easily broken. Where you trust me and I trust you and things are talked out.

I want it all as comfortable as possible…like sweatpants that are worn in and cozy and allows room for growth and grace in the same way drawstrings work.

I don’t want bad with anyone. I don’t want bitterness, or anger, or awkwardness when we see each other. I can’t handle any of that “are we speaking? Are we not speaking? Are we friends? Are we cool face to face, but behind my back you’re spitting fire and bringing my name down?”

I’m full. Motherhood is a mental workout all day, every day. Adulthood in general is pretty stressful. Bills and work and deadlines and all of that business.

I don’t want any drama. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not even in tiny doses. None. If you throw it my way, I hate to disappoint you, but I will not even attempt to catch it.

I don’t want chaos, or turmoil, or any of that. I don’t want gossip. I don’t want to hear secrets that may or may not even be true. I mean…I’ll keep your secrets for sure, but I’m just going to extend compassion and assume everybody is doing the best they possibly can.

And I’m good on the tea. I don’t need any. I prefer that fizzy, flavored water stuff anyway. Maybe a Diet Dr. Pepper.

I want peace.

And I’ve learned that sometimes it’s not really about keeping the peace. It’s about creating peace.

It’s about confronting things head-on. It’s about asking good questions. It’s about listening. It’s about keeping my ridiculous knee-jerk reactions to myself. It’s about refusing to brush the difficult stuff under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist until that rug becomes a mountain in-between me and my friend. It’s about talking things out and approaching every situation with kindness first.

It’s about apologizing.

It’s about maturity.

It’s about boundaries and knowing that even when I give my best, not everyone will appreciate it, want it, or like it.

It’s about loving them and letting them go from there.

I know I’m a mess sometimes and I’m insecure and prideful and I make so many mistakes. I’m

So imperfect. I just…

I dunno.

I want peace.

I want it to ooze out of me. I want it in me. I want it on me. I want it around me. I want it to come through me.

No matter what anyone else is doing.

I want peace.

And tacos and stuff, obviously.

Love,

Amy”

Sister, I am with you. 

Quasars

 “A quasar (/ˈkweɪzɑːr/ KWAY-zar) is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. The emission from an AGN is powered by a supermassive black hole with a mass ranging from millions to tens of billions of solar masses, surrounded by a gaseous accretion disc. Gas in the disc falling towards the black hole heats up and releases energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than that of a galaxy such as the Milky Way.[2][3] …” (Wiki)

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When I saw this image above, the word “QUASAR” came to mind. Haven’t heard that word in quite awhile, but after researching it a bit, I think I better understand part of the image significance here.  If you look closely at the image’s upper third, you see a ring of light around a dark center point; and that light ring is radiating large bands of light from it—illuminating the clouds around it. (Partial solar eclipse image maybe?)

If this were a true quasar image rather than just an optical camera effect, the ring of light would be the actual spiraling ‘accretion disc’ to that center black hole that is sucking all universal gaseous mass into it, because as a true black hole sucks that matter into the hole itself (which is similar to released bathtub water spiraling down the drain), the increasing velocity and fast rising temperature of the spiraling mass (called ‘the accretion disc’) creates enormous quantities of electromagnetic energy.

Here’s another definition before I go farther:

“Quasars are the remarkably bright cores of active galaxies in the distant universe, they are an extreme form of what astronomers call “active galactic nuclei”, or AGN for short. 

An active galaxy is one in which the central supermassive black hole is consuming large amounts of matter. The infall of matter into the black hole is so great that all the material can’t enter the black hole at the same time and so it forms a queue as a spiraling accretion disk. 

The matter — in the form of huge clouds — falls into the disk, with the inner parts of the cloud closer to the black hole orbiting faster than the outer parts (just like planets closer to the sun orbit faster than those farther away). This creates a shear force that twists the clouds, causing them to bump into their neighbors as they move around the black hole at velocities ranging from 10% of the speed of light up to over 80%. This friction from fast-moving gas clouds generates heat, and the disk becomes so hot — millions of degrees — that it shines brightly. 

Some of the material in the disk is also funneled away from the black hole in a highly luminous, magnetically collimated jet. The hot accretion disk and the jet combine to make the nucleus of the active galaxy shine so bright that it can be seen far across the universe…” (www.space.com/17262-quasar-definition.html)

***

Now as I’ve read, the closest black hole and accompanying quasar are 750 million light years away—or are 750 million light years IN THE PAST because what we can see at present has taken that long to reach our eyes.

But what does all of this mean to us?

For me, when I see something of this unfathomable and nearly inconceivable magnitude for my little brain to handle, I feel minuscule in the face of such enormity and existential importance. I had a similar feeling writing “It’s Been Strange” exploring the Earth’s and humanity’s evolution over eons of existence. (Check out the chart of evolution on that and see how short a time we’ve actually been around.)

When we can zoom out of our own little personal day-to-day dramas over totally insignificant issues, and properly place ourselves in the larger picture of all known existence, we are suddenly struck by how microscopic we actually are to the overall workings of the Universe, or even to LIFE itself.

It’s totally mind-blowing.

So for whatever reason “Quasars” came into my mind this morning, I find it all very humbling. Maybe I needed a reminder.

Being Human

“This being human is a guest house—every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi

www.earthschoolharmony.com

***

Surviving the Storm

Evidently my intuitive energy-awareness is still able to pick up similar inputs to what Lee Harris is intuiting. He covers much of the same ‘flushing out the old energies’ aspects that I mentioned in my previous post, but also gives it broader context for you to consider so perhaps it might make more sense to you by how he has covered the overall subject of shifting collective energies in our current common reality. He’s worth a listen in his April Energy Update just out today, so I’m just sharing the opportunity for you to do so here:

https://www.leeharrisenergy.com/april-2024-eu

Flushing the Old Energies

To me this seems to be a time of revisiting and then releasing the old memories and energies associated with those memories. Could be due in part to the lunar and solar eclipses energetically affecting everyone right now, or it might be just the dimensional time-shifting in general occurring behind the scenes as I’ve mentioned before in a post. Something is stirring up a lot of old unpleasantness for everyone.

Today Easter Sunday itself is primarily a symbolic day of resurrection and revival, but it can also represent a major shift in energies from a sense of hopelessness and despair to a renewed sense of possibility and potential.

However to reach that potential possibility we first have to let go of the old thoughts and manners of being. Nothing unsettles us faster than reviewing our past for the emotional slights, pains, and injustices we might have suffered as children or as young adults prior to our ability to fend for ourselves in the world.

Mistakes were often made then by us and by others directed at us—a LOT or mistakes—that seem so ludicrous to our present mind-state, but weren’t so trivial to us back then in our youth. The emotional energetics of those old painful memories can still linger in our energy fields even now until we intentionally release them—allowing the energies to dissipate into the ethers and letting those impactful old memories settle to dust where they belong as the energies depart from them.

Don’t know how or when you are most affected by this current phase of universal memory purging and release, but for me it mostly occurs at night when I’m trying to drift off to sleep; which is about the worst time that you want to relive those unpleasant memories and emotions from all phases of your life.

At least through all my training I can recognize it for what it is—a memory/stuck-energy packet review and release, if I allow it to happen. But if instead of releasing it, I let the old memory fully envelop me and kick my current emotions into gear to match the memories intensity, it could nearly drive me nuts.

So if something similar to this old memories/emotional funk purging is also happening to you, my suggestion would be to blow out the nasty energies as soon as the old memory surfaces, just where you start to feel the hurtful emotions associated with it.

Take big, deep, open-mouth breaths blowing out those uncomfortable memories and all ‘feelings’ associated with those memories until you notice that they no longer have the same control over you that they once had because you have successfully released their punch-power.

It may take awhile to work through whatever comes into your mind whenever it most affects you, but just keep seeing/feeling and acknowledging whatever is arising, and then keep blowing it out as it comes up.  That’s how you can successfully do a ‘purge and release’ of old memories/emotions.

I don’t know about you out there, but I am definitely ready for the resurrection and renewal of the person I most want and need to be at this time of my life.

Happy Easter.  In a traditional sense, He Has Risen; and in truth, so can we.

Expectations and Disappointments

Hey, don’t we all have certain expectations on all aspects of our lives, and then feel the subsequent disappointments that naturally accompany those unmet expectations whether they were realistic or not?

Maybe we expected our lives to turn out as some fantasized version of happiness and prosperity, but it just didn’t happen for us. Or maybe we expected our friends to always stand by us and always support us through the roughest, most emotionally-traumatic times of our lives, but surprisingly they didn’t. So we then became deeply disappointed with our lives or with our friends because those expectations we had set for our anticipated future, simply did not materialize in that same manner.

Have you been there?  I have; and it’s not a pleasant state of mind in which to awaken. But it IS an awakening for us—a shock back into the reality that we actually live from this moment to the next. And HOW we live in our true reality is of prime importance to us because it requires that we shift our thinking toward the best way to approach both our present and our future lives.

I was reminded of that important mind-state perspective shift while reading a posting from a popular spiritual person who I occasionally follow; and I never expected to see her writing these particular thoughts because she always seemed to have her head in the clouds and her world by the tale. Maybe that wasn’t the actual reality of her life. In this posting she reflected here on her unmet expectations and deduced that the necessary perspective shift most conducive to that crucial inner awakening for her involved the word ‘ALLOW.’ Meaning that when you wade into the stream of LIFE you have to respect the power and natural flow of it, or it can up-end you.

***

“ Mei-lan Maurits

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on a concept that has profoundly shifted my perspective and approach to life. It’s a word that I have been tapping into a lot: Allow.

It’s a simple word, yet its power to transform our experience is immense.

In our lives, where effort and control often dominate our actions and plans, embracing the essence of Allow can be a radical change. I noticed whenever I start forcing outcomes or pushing for things to work against their natural course, it disrupts my energy flow. Similar to a river dammed, where vitality stagnates, and the vibrancy of life diminishes.

Forcing represents a resistance to the natural flow of existence, suggesting that we might know better than the complex, intricate wisdom of life itself. This battle not only leads to exhaustion and frustration but often leaves us feeling deeply unsatisfied, even when we achieve the outcomes we thought we desired.

On the other side, the grace of Allowing is about creating space for our energy to move freely. It’s an acknowledgment of and alignment with the universe’s rhythm, which opens us up to opportunities and solutions that resonate with our true essence. This concept doesn’t advocate for passivity but rather an active engagement with life, recognizing our role in co-creation with the universe.

The big learning for me was the understanding that Allowing invites grace into our lives. It teaches us that harmony and ease come not from forcing our way through life but through creating an opening for the natural, necessary, and extraordinary to emerge.

If this message resonates with you I invite you to explore this concept in your own life. Consider the areas where you might be forcing outcomes and imagine what might change if you simply allowed things to unfold. Remember, the magic of life isn’t in the forcing but in the allowing, where the universe can truly conspire in our favor.

Blessing your journey with ease, alignment, and profound openings to the wonders that await when we simply Allow.

All my love,

~Mei-lan”

Memory As Such

If I could only remember everything I’ve read throughout my life, what wisdom I could spout now.

Unfortunately my memory spits and sputters like an asthmatic lawnmower engine proving it has just enough spark to announce important potential to the situation at hand, but not enough cranking power to keep the entire thought moving forward toward the desired destination; or you can’t cut much grass with an asthmatic mower.

Anyway, when I saw the image and thought above I wanted to offer a good reference book that described how we use anger to mask so many of our inner vulnerabilities, like feelings of grief, helplessness, fear, sadness, loneliness, and uncertainty. And of course now I can’t recall the book itself that described the situations or the author who conducted the study, but it had to do with helping veterans with severe trauma episodes and using EMDR to diffuse the energies of the most traumatic memories. (O’Hanlon’s books are good reference books along those lines, but this one wasn’t him.)

The gist of the thought was this: None of us like to feel vulnerable or in need of help from others to simply get on with our daily lives—just to make it through the day from one moment to the next, or from one day to the day after that. So when we feel like we might be internally shaky and/or falling apart emotionally, we tend to self-protectively regroup in our minds and shift our emotional states to the strongest emotion we can muster to better solidify our forward momentum; and that emotion is often ANGER.

Nothing pulls you out of a miserable funk faster than being ticked off over someone else’s behavior or thoughtless words/actions. It refocuses your attention and efforts toward protecting your more vulnerable self, and directing more hostile energies and intentions at any others daring to cross your path.

Anger is essentially a great ‘refocusing agent’. It provides the mental clarity to aim our uncertain, wobbly intentions toward some forward momentum and away from the stagnant hole we were stuck in before we engaged our fury over most anything that matched our momentary need to strike out against our own feelings of complete helplessness.

Do you know people who walk around pissed off most of the time?  Guess what they are likely hiding beneath that hostile exterior?  They could be hiding feelings of victimization, or inadequacy, or raw pain, or never-ending memories of loss or injustice; but they don’t want you to get close enough to them to see or feel it radiating from their quivering bodies, so instead they mask it with a ferocious fierceness and an acidic glare that can peel paint off a tool shed with a single glance.

They literally beam these words in front of them as they approach you: STAY AWAY FROM ME!  CAN’T YOU SEE I’M DANGEROUS?!! And you do stay away for sanity-preservation and personal safety. That’s what anger can do—it warns, then threatens, and lastly lashes out. “Approach at your own risk!” it visually claims.  “Are you really brave enough to confront me?!!”

But most of the time the angry person is simply wallowing in pain or shivering in perpetual fear or sinking ever lower in deep, deep sadness, but they don’t want you to see that vulnerability in them. Vulnerability represents ‘weakness;’ and weak people don’t last long in this combative world.

If you are intrigued enough to learn more about all of this, hopefully you’ll run across the book about a male therapist who helped many veterans deal with their debilitating PTSD using EMDR techniques (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing); or I found a good book on my shelves about combining brain science with psychotherapy called  Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., that gives a comprehensive explanation to how the brain actually functions in various situations; and how we can take control of our own lives again once we better understand how previously we were auto-reacting to the world around us without assessing WHY we were doing so.  It’s worth a read. (My book is full of underlines and side notes so it must have been interesting enough to have held my attention.) Looks like he also writes of similar therapy situations that I mentioned dealing with veteran’s PTSD.  Hope it fits your needs to learn more about the subject matter.

As an energy worker, I know that emotions are energy spurts, bursts, or leaks, so better understanding our range of emotions helps us to raise our personal energy frequencies higher out of the doom and gloom range; and to make our lives and the lives of those around us, more desirable and pleasant for all.

You may not be able to prevent how others treat you, but you can choose to react or respond to that treatment in a manner that best suits your own purposes for living a more loving and peaceful life.  That is a choice worth intentionally making.

They DO Exist!

“They DO Exist!” 

For those familiar with holiday commercials that sounds like the Santa Claus/M&M’s Christmas Eve meet up by the fireplace and tree.

For me, I’ve been working at this ‘other dimensions exist’ realization for at least three decades; plus I’ve also read the book mentioned above, so I was not a newbie on the ‘multi-dimensions of existence’ concept, nor on how it was handled in the book by the time I read The Afterlife of Billy Fingers, which was basically Billy’s take on his ‘spirit life’ after death.

But just to note here, that when these sudden ‘body-knowledge realizations’ that life is far more than it seems to be, make it past your (“No, …this can’t be happening”) rational mind, they can be both scary and mind-blowing at the same time. So the book for you may be confirmation of an already known fact or it might represent NEW thought into previously unknown concepts. Only you will know for certain how it presents for you if you read it.

“When you realize that other dimensions exist, you’ll never think of life, death, yourself, or the universe in the same way again,” is a statement of TRUTH in my world. To me it is NOT theoretical—it is factual. But to YOU?….

That not-so-simple realization that other dimensions DO exist all around you and that YOU in fact ARE multi-dimensional yourself, can shift your comprehension ability in unfathomable ways for better or for worse because it can be mentally destabilizing if you have no frame of reference for the situations that you may experience through sudden multi-D experiences.

As I’ve mentioned years before in this blog, I teach REIKI—a Japanese Energy Therapy and Spiritual Practice that I learned in the mid-90’s. Through that practice, along with further pursuits in energy-work training, my own natural psychic abilities enhanced and developed so that I then became aware of ‘other stuff’ beyond this normal window’s glimpse into the world around us. Some of those “realizations” were mystical and amazing, and some were downright unsettling—even to me.

Also through my studies into hypnosis, and by my having conducted Past Life/Spirit World Explorations with clients, I became even more acutely aware that REALITY itself is a permeable mesh gauze that we populate with our thoughts and emotions. We are the actual ‘creators’ of what we experience; and we can change those life experiences by how we focus our thoughts and our energies toward what we intend to happen in our lives.

‘Intention’ is the key here because our intention not only creates our reality; it also drives the bus (our life) toward a chosen destination. So that makes INTENTION vitally important for us to clarify and to maintain strong emotional (energy higher-frequencies) connection to it.

So I’ll repeat that quote one more time: “When you realize that other dimensions exist, you’ll never think of life, death, yourself, or the universe in the same way again.” And then say this: To fully grasp the multi-dimensionality of ourselves is to realize that in one sense we are living in an elaborate dream that we have colonized with challenges to help us grow our consciousness; and in another sense ‘we are in charge’ of what we are dreaming/experiencing during the dream so we can make changes along the way, if we so desire.

Maybe that is the hardest aspect to consider about the totality of yourself: That your life is changeable in many ways if you are not content with your current situation. Just learn to shift your mind (your attitude), shift your energies higher (raise your energy frequency), and shift your possibilities (broaden your playing field) to open up to new experiences that better match your heart’s deepest desires.

I mean, it’s your life on all levels of existence. How do you want to live it?

Jumping Time

The first time it happened, I was unsure of what had actually occurred.

The next time it happened I was, “Come on, this can’t really be happening.”

The third time it happened I knew it was real and I’d have to make a change or I could never rely on what I was seeing.

Over the last week my bedroom electric clock had jumped time from a few minutes ahead the day before, to an hour and a half time jump ahead twice in 4 days.

‘How can that be?’ I asked the Ethers hoping for an answer. It’s an electric radio-alarm clock I’ve had for at least twenty-five years.  Is the cat cleverly pushing his dinner time ahead to fool me? Actually with him that would not be surprising, but I think it was purely the clock’s OWN intentions that shifted time forward, and I found that thought unsettling for many reasons. So I started paying much closer attention to my surroundings—physical and Ethereal.

While the NEW electric replacement alarm clock is wifi smart and automatically resets itself to world time zones as soon as you plug it in, the OLD one was strictly a manually-set electric clock. When it jumped ahead in all those recent instances it wasn’t auto-resetting for Daylight Savings Time or Mid-Atlantic Time zones, it just wanted to move on out of here faster, period. 

And with the state of the world right now, I can’t really blame it for that.

But since I always assume that my reality is a reflection of what is happening beyond this 3-D world we lumber through daily, I began to look for other tell-tale signs that something BIG is happening behind the dimensional scenes alluding to a major time-shift, (or dimensional shift) and I simply haven’t managed to see the broader picture yet.

I mean TIME in general just FEELS different to me now. Have you noticed it? Hopefully I’m not alone in this feeling because it’s hard to explain other than there is malleability to my waking hours now that wasn’t always present. Sometimes time moves SO slowly for me it’s as though I’m dragging my feet through wet cement; and other times it shoots ahead of my expectations like a fleet gazelle on an African savannah evading a lion.

Something strange is happening to our dimension right now—maybe it’s a shift higher, maybe it’s a merger of timelines. All I know is that TIME itself is changing and my NEW clock may not prevent it from jumping ahead if that is the ultimate higher intention.

Or maybe I need to bell that ornery cat so I know when he’s near my electric alarm clock.

Freedom of Response

If you haven’t yet read Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, I suggest you soon do so.

Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist whose entire family was taken and eventually deported to Auschwitz, the World War II German prisoner of war labor camp for captured Jews. He was one of the few who survived after spending three years in four different Nazi POW camps.

In the book he described the horrors of the experience, but he also used it as a psychological study of ALL participants, captors as well as prisoners; and he explained how humanity was in short supply except for those with unshakable resolve and the strength of mind over whatever was happening to them at the time.

He later formed his own theory on the ‘aberration versus the resiliency of human behavior’ and developed his own psychological approach to treating his clients, called “Logotherapy,” based primarily on his personal experiences in the camps.

I read this book over twenty-five years ago and I still can recall how I felt while reading it. So as a fellow world resident who had also ‘searched for meaning’ much of my adult life, I can say that this book might help shift your perspective on YOUR life in a way that few others can.

It’s well worth a read.

Excerpt from Wikipedia below describing the book’s contents and value:

“…Frankl concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. In a group therapy session during a mass fast inflicted on the camp’s inmates trying to protect an anonymous fellow inmate from fatal retribution by authorities, Frankl offered the thought that for everyone in a dire condition there is someone looking down, a friend, family member, or even God, who would expect not to be disappointed. Frankl concludes from his experience that a prisoner’s psychological reactions are not solely the result of the conditions of his life, but also from the freedom of choice he always has even in severe suffering. The inner hold a prisoner has on his spiritual self relies on having a hope in the future, and that once a prisoner loses that hope, he is doomed.

Frankl also concludes that there are only two races of men, decent men and indecent. No society is free of either of them, and thus there were “decent” Nazi guards and “indecent” prisoners, most notably the kapo who would torture and abuse their fellow prisoners for personal gain…. “(Wiki)

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Sitting in Your Soul

NICABM (National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine) offers Facebook image blurbs to encourage healthy living and enhanced mental resilience; plus occasionally offering online classes and speaker summits that I’ve participated in previously.

Today’s image above is focused on the importance of MINDFULNESS with the Ram Dass quote:  “When you are down here in your soul, in that plane of consciousness, you forget the fear or anxiety or feeling of inadequacy.”

‘Mindfulness’ achieved through meditation is an acquired skill, but one that is easily transferable to others once they learn the techniques. It is well worth learning mindfulness—being able to stop the devastating effects of rampant mind chaos and chronic self-doubt by calming oneself without taking drugs is a desirable goal for anyone.

It not only makes you more mentally unshakable and resilient to life’s daily challenges, it also helps you to shift your perspective on how your life is unfolding before your eyes. Such as:

  • Are you a passive observer of your life or are you an active participant in your life?
  • Do you see yourself as the one to which all bad things are done, or are you the intentional doer of what good things might develop for you?
  • When something unkind is said or done to you, do you instantly take it personally and feel anger, shame, self-loathing because of it; or can you shrug off the unkindness as that person having shared his/her unhappiness with you but also know that it was not really ABOUT YOU—it was about what was happening inside that person at the time that made her say or do those things to you?

Mindfulness is a great tool for dropping down out of life’s insanity and sitting calmly in the pure waves of your own conscious awareness. From that vantage point ALL is undulating ocean—far and wide—and you are merely the local wave riding life’s flow to some unimaginable destination that awaits you.

Feel only the floating sensations surrounding you—suspending you in ceaseless bliss—and allow your body to observe without judgment as you settle in to that frequency of sentient awareness without care or concern.

Mindfulness can be a very nice respite—very soothing and rejuvenating.

The world around you even appears different and less threatening when you can control how, or whether, you let it affect you.

I think I previously mentioned that reading Thich Nhat Hahn helped me better understand the concept and practice of Mindfulness.

Why not try it for yourself?

Standing in the Stream

During summer’s heat, if you don’t mind getting your feet wet you’ve likely stood at least one time in a gentle stream and allowed the cool running water to casually flow over and around your feet and lower legs.

There where the current is mild with water tickling your ankles and calves as it envelops you, encasing you, embracing you, you notice how much a part of the stream itself you feel—the gentle force—the liquid intensity wrapping around your legs, tugging at you to let go and become one with the water’s perpetual flow.

On our land in Missouri we had such a stream that wove through the bottom land along the hay field and grazing pasture where the cattle would spend their hottest days standing in that stream to cool down. The only time it ever rose to four-foot bank height was during flash flood deluges, so for most days it was more trickle than torrent.

But the ‘stream’ itself is what I’m referring to now. “THE STREAM” is the steam of LIFE—the ebb and flow of life itself as you move along with it or stand strongly against it until it forces you back into the flow.  You can’t escape it because it is the force of LIFE evolving in ceaseless waves of energy. You can either ride the flow or you can struggle against it until it overpowers you. Those are your choices.

Sometimes the stream is gentle and soothing, and sometimes it is powerful and overwhelming; but it is always the ‘stream of LIFE’ with all its variety and voracious appetites. When you ‘go with LIFE’s flow’ you ride life’s currents wherever they may take you: bumping and tumbling over boulders in your path and being swept around craggy cliff faces.

When you buck LIFE’s flow, you set your feet as firmly as you can wherever you currently are, and strain to maintain your footing while the water’s volume and strength increases until it rises high enough to lift you up and away. From there your choices are minimal, and the likelihood of escaping the current’s grasp is practically nil unless an outside force plucks you from the water—a limb, a rocky outcrop, an extending sandbar, or a generous stranger.

So as you now stand in that gentle stream hopefully you learn to recognize the stream’s future potential even as it slowly trickles around your tired calves—don’t underestimate the stream’s latent power and how quickly the water can rise with unseen, upstream rain. Respect the stream’s changeability and propensity to alter your personal future plans, no matter how carefully you might have set them, because that’s what happens to those who try to stand against LIFE’s natural flow—it upends you.

Or you can simply ignore the increasing pressure of those rising waters—so sure of your own abilities to withstand the pounding current and the growing depth that make wading through the stream more difficult, because after all, it’s only a steam.

Good luck with that thought.

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