FINDING YOUR TRUTH

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.

Sense the Tender Soul

“To sense joy in the purest form is to sense the tender soul,

for a wealth of abundance lies in your deep,

calling you to come and claim it.

There the river of fragrance flows through you,

Drinking from the cup of silence

you enter the kingdom of light….”

….’Song of Eternity’…Excerpt Jayita Bhattacharjee

Inspiration Showers

Not So Magical After All

Let’s see, about a month ago I wrote about Winter Magic, but also mentioned that by mid-January it was the opposite. How prophetic.

Today is Sunday, January 14, 2024, and we’ve had 28 inches of snow in the last 4 days—including blizzard conditions with 45-50 mph winds for the last two days.
It’s currently -14 degrees at 6am with a high expected at -9 degrees today—all exterior storm doors were frozen shut yesterday morning forcing me to spray de-icer along the inside storm door frame in hopes it would penetrate to outer problem and fortunately it did, or we couldn’t have left the house until spring thaw.
We lost power for an hour and a half 3 days ago and our backup generator would not start so we had to hand-bucket 30 gallons of sump hole water out of the basement sump pit to keep it from overflowing onto the basement floor, until the power was thankfully restored. (That means carrying it up the stairs and tossing it outside to flash-freeze on the snowdrifts in minutes.) I hope the generator guy’s life insurance is paid up because he may not live much longer when he finally shows up here, ”Ahhh….maybe Monday”.
We have personally shoveled (and we’re not young any longer) so much snow off the walks, patio, and in front of garage doors to fill a dump truck and our backs are killing us.
Our steadfast neighbor guy dug our driveway out with his open-cab skid steer loader twice already, and will likely again in a day or so. (We love our neighbors—but too bad they don’t have a kid who likes to shovel snow or we’d hire him to do it for us.)
Woke this morning to 3 more inches of “magic” out there at -14 degrees, and decided that it’s just gonna stay there awhile. Enough is enough!

And where we live in Iowa we aren’t even the worst temps and/or snows throughout the nation. Come on 2024—you’re better than this!

Remember the Mountains and Valleys

“When you start to feel like things could have been better this year
Remember the mountains and valleys that got you here
They are not accidents
and those moments weren’t in vain.
You are not the same
You have grown and you are growing.
You are breathing , you are living.
You are wrapped in
Endless
Boundless
Grace
And things will get better.
There is more to you than yesterday …”

~ Morgan Harper Nichols ~
Artist Credit : Anna Speshilova
Serendipity Corner

Acknowledging Ourselves

We exist. We ARE. We live and die, and somewhere in-between the two, we learn.

WHAT we learn depends on so many factors such as our living environments, our support teams on earth and beyond who protect us and nurture our growth, and that soul spark within us that drives us forward toward some unseen goal or aspiration that only our hearts may recognize.

When very young if we were well supported and encouraged to make the most of our talents and proclivities, we developed self-confidence and open-mindedness. We were often then eager to face the wonders of this amazing world stretched out so beautifully before us.

If we were left to fend for ourselves from childhood onwards, we learned to survive by any means necessary. What we learned from those circumstances were more along the lines of primal self-preservation rather than consideration of others. We learned to compete, to win to live, and to take no prisoners in the process because they only consumed precious resources we may need in the future for ourselves.

I was fortunate to be among the first description—the well supported and protected. That has likely made all the difference in my life.

But as a baby had I not been offered up for adoption to a family that could provide those very things, I might have been among the second description—left to fend for myself in a more dysfunctional family situation.

Was my particular destiny the ‘luck of the draw’ or preordained? Depends on your beliefs, I guess. Either way, advantageous or unfavorable upbringings are part of the reason that we become who we are as adult people in a sometimes loving/sometimes harsh world.

While I’m not a fence-straddler on rightness and wrongness aspects by any means, I do try to see others’ perspectives and viewpoints when I consider judging them for their actions or deeds because we eventually become who we are allowed to slowly blossom into, or we become who and what we most need to be at our earliest opportunity—even become our own defenders when necessary, at any age.

Children learn quickly to utilize whatever works best for them in each situation with adults—what attitudes, what demeanors, what masks, what words, what tactics, what emotions to display. We learn early on how to gain attention, and sometimes how to avoid it.

We learn to stand out in a crowd or to hide away in a closet under a pile of clothes, depending on the audience we must play to. We learn so many life-sustaining tricks to evolve from one day to the next, from one week to the next, and from one year to the next—if we are able to live that long. Children are resourceful—we learn what must be done to survive or thrive.

So how do we look around ourselves at such diverse human life experiences and try to come together on supporting common social causes and gathering group consensus for creating a better society and world culture? How do we know what is BEST for ALL of us?

My only suggestion is to ‘listen more and talk less.’

Maybe then we can really hear what our neighbors are saying to us, and begin to better understand how they actually feel.

And wouldn’t it be super nice if they did the same for us?

The Mysteries

Sounds like an exploration of the ancient Greek mystery cults which were of great interest to me earlier in life, but instead what I’m referring to now are fiction crime novels written by skilled wordsmiths. There are many authors in that CRIME MYSTERY genre and darn few that are truly gifted at writing.

And I appreciate a darn good writer—knowledgeable, well-researched, with lyrical prose—using all five senses-based images, metaphors and similes—and the ability to effortlessly tell a complex, intertwined-characters story with ease and grace so it slides into your conscious awareness like sipping cool spring water on a hot summer’s day. John Connolly and Karin Slaughter are two such gifted authors, for example.

But unfortunately what goes along with that amazingly well-written plot ‘mystery’ aspect is the setting/scene gruesomeness part; and that is a little harder to digest. Much of their subject matter is based on actual documented cases of human depravity and cruelty—like a psychopaths’ rampant defiling of innocents and the unaware. So this more acrid story content isn’t necessarily a figment of a writer’s twisted brain—it is the actual documentation of what a true twisted brain can do and HAS DONE—it is often a limited study of human depravity and perversion on 450 pages of recycled wood pulp.

To me THAT is the real mystery—why people can be wired that way—to kill and maim and randomly terrorize whoever is convenient and within their reach. But then you can’t watch the national news without seeing more of the same, just on a far larger scale depending on the location: Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, old Bosnia and Serbia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Syria—it’s all there in real time with real people doing insane acts on other people, and we close our eyes and shake our heads and think ‘Thank God it’s not happening to me.’

WHY people feel the need to be so cruel and heartless at all, is the real mystery to me.

Now as a pretty experienced energy worker who is also well aware of what ‘else’ besides us shares our overall energy operating-zone, I’m not naive about the influence other ‘forces’ can have on susceptible human minds. But I also know that people have to want to awaken to a higher state of being before they can change their personal lives for the better, along with the rest of humanity in the process.

It has to be a choice to change their life to a higher behavioral standard. It has to be a choice to accept or not accept what is happening around them or remotely near them or even thousands of miles away from them.

As that same ‘experienced energy worker,’ I read this gruesome ‘fiction’ stuff to toughen my sensibilities and better enable me to recognize and face down whatever ‘evil incarnates’ that I may encounter now, because I’ve already had some pretty hairy experiences in my past with foreign entities on people that I worked with—felt them tingling like electrical currents under my hands—reaching out into my solar plexus at my own energy center to zap me with their nastiness. These things are real—they DO exist—and they CAN affect other people who may not be aware of their actual existence.

BUT,….there still has to be a greater awakening to the overall population that cruelty, inhumanity, and depravity are NOT acceptable human norms; and the heroes and heroines in these crime novels who hunt down and eliminate the psychopaths perpetrating the horrendous crimes are equated to real life people who also must deal with such horrific situations to protect the rest of our communities and society in general from them.

Tell me now, who saves us from our lesser selves in the real world—who stops the hatred—the cruel words—the threats and intimidations to those who dare disagree with others or to those who try to hold law breakers to account? You? Me? WHO?

WHO actually holds the offenders accountable for their anti-social actions? WHO is it?

Those protectors of humanity—the ‘Do-ers’ of right actions—the ones who make all wrongs right again. Write about those people, please. They are the ones I want to learn more about and personally know.

Beliefs and Concepts

“Our beliefs and concepts are the greatest obstacles to awakening.” (AwakenTheWorld)

***

This won’t be another rant against organized religions, although it’s clear how detrimental I feel that many of them are by discouraging an individual’s self-inquiry and personal consciousness development.

We can actually be biased and closed-minded about most anything that we encounter in life, but when personal beliefs are concerned, nothing says “My way, or the highway,” better and faster than a religion—especially a specific doctrine that spells out what you ‘can and can’t do’ with your own precious life.

It used to be what you ‘should and shouldn’t do’ rather than ‘can and can’t’ but the US Supreme Court changed that 50+ year ruling when they gave in to the Religious Right and banned the ability of a woman to decide the fate of her own body and life.

Beliefs and concepts can be made substantive like suddenly encountering a cloud of mist and freezing it in place in our minds with our opinion of what that mist cloud should actually look like and how it should act or react, rather than allowing the mist to simply increase or dissipate on its own by flowing up, down, right or left and us simply observing it during the ongoing process.

When we limit the possibilities of whatever we encounter rather than simply observing them without judgment, we stop our self-growth in its evolutional track and say in effect, “No thanks. I know all I will ever need to know right now, so whatever that is in front of me that might educate me further is of no consequence to my current knowledgebase or my future learning potential.”

And religion isn’t the only fall-guy in this consideration; it’s just the easiest one to describe. We can make judgments about anything and everything that we encounter throughout the day—and especially make those judgments about the people we meet and with whom we associate our time because TIME is so valuable to us that we dole it out sparingly, and only to those most deserving of us.

Unfortunately we make these instant daily judgments on autopilot—because we are such creatures of habit and are always looking for ways to quickly classify whatever we encounter so we don’t waste time getting to better understand its significance aside from how it directly affects us. We really are that self-centered and self-focused. There wouldn’t be so many mass species extinctions occurring now if we were concerned for earth life beyond ourselves at this moment in time.

THAT is an actual belief: That human life is more precious than any other earth-based species existence.

Another actual belief: That personal greed and power are more important than sharing our abundance with those less able to produce their own. Genocides are efficient ways to reduce the demand for limited resources. It is happening all over the world right now. Do we condemn it or condone it? And how far are we willing to go to change the situation for the better for those under siege? Are we willing to make their battles for existence, OUR battles?

Sometimes I wonder why this experiential mode of learning was used to awaken a soul. I’m not so sure it is effective.

Winter Magic

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.

Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it ..”

~ Roald Dahl ~Artist Credit : Elaine Bayley

Serendipity Corner

What can I say; it’s that time of year.

Everyone in the snow-belt is infatuated with the new white stuff—especially the first snows. By mid-January it’s quite the opposite. However right now in mid-December sparkling, glittering, puffy flakes seem simply magical and mesmerizing.

Looking out the window this morning before daylight I witnessed the grass below the yard light was covered in shimmering diamonds. At 14 degrees Fahrenheit, I do know those ‘diamonds’ are actually ice crystals formed when high humidity is trapped by fast dropping overnight temperatures. If you venture out now, your breath will form visible ‘clouds’ as it leaves your lips at these temps.

So to do anything outside at a crisp 14 degrees, you pack on twenty pounds of extra outerwear plus snow boots if the white stuff is more than an inch or so. That part is not quite so magical.

But you do so to put out birdseed and catfood to feed the yard’s residents who aren’t as enthralled by the winter ‘magic’ itself. (Or to have also provided hay and grain for the hogs, cattle, and horses of our past.)

None the less, the season’s natural gifts are still beautiful to behold—especially from inside a warm house.

P.S. … That is one HUGE rabbit! Must be the magical part.

Wishing You Peace

This is the time of year when we gather with family and friends for good food, fellowship, and joy.

At least that’s the intention of the year-end holiday season, but not everyone is so blessed right now. And while I do wish everyone an abundance of food, love, peace and joviality, I also know that world-wide many are experiencing terrible hardships and horrendous living conditions.

For those of you who are struggling, I wish you courage and stamina to find a way to survive the current horrors of your life. There will be much death and destruction before the fighting ceases in many locations. Unfortunately that is as much a part of the human experience now as is showing kindness and compassion to those around us.

Seeing this bunny image took me back 30+ years to our 100 acres in the Ozark Hills of Missouri where my dad, my husband and I lived for almost a decade after my mom died. There were cedar trees coming up wherever they were allowed to grow as most ranchers in the area considered them scrub brush and taking up valuable cow grazing land; so they were often cut down to keep a pasture clear. But we usually let some of ours grow and then cut one at Christmas time to put in the house. Very fragrant those cedar trees—very prickly also; but when it snowed during the winter there, the scenery in southwest Missouri looked a lot like that image above, and the smaller animals would scamper about looking for food and shelter beneath those cedars.

It was always such a peaceful time after the first snow with the land covered in a soft, cold blanket of white fluff. It’s easy to forget the more difficult times of your life when you are immersed in the beauty of such pristine whiteness.

Here in the NOW where I currently live back in Iowa, our first measurable snow was last week, and for a time, when those first huge flakes began to gently drift to the ground, it was just beautiful, and the moment felt almost sacred—so I stood in awe for some time watching the picture-perfect scene outside my window and thought about times long past, noting how each era of our lives brings great joys to mind as well as great sorrows.

Yesterday I put flowers on the graves of my grandmother and my parents. My ex-husband has also passed but is not buried in my vicinity or I would honor him as well. Those we have loved moved on from this plane of existence to the next, or in one sense it can be said they have returned HOME from where we all originated. While I may feel great loss for their passing, I know their journey continues elsewhere and mine is still here until my earthly work is done whenever that might be, so I’m not sad in that respect.

It is simply LIFE. This is what we do until we in turn pass on to other endeavors beyond this plane.

Whatever your situation, just enjoy the holiday season as best you can with camaraderie, joviality, and good intentions toward all. Share your abundance with others when possible, and please wish the best for ALL of us everywhere—lord knows, we ALL need your best wishes about now.

Be grateful for what you DO still have and for those who are currently in your company. And let’s try to be a little nicer to everyone we meet from here on out because you never know who might be standing right in front of you, disguised as a stranger.

Peace and love!

“To Make You Feel My Love”

“When the rain is blowing in your face
And the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love…”

Bob Dylan

When I meditated on this lovely image for awhile, in my mind I heard Billie Joel singing this Dylan song’s title words, “To Make You Feel My Love.”

And that is what I felt: LOVE.

So instead of me dissecting and analyzing the components of what LOVE actually is, I hope you simply enjoy both the beautiful image above and hear Billy Joel singing the title song for yourself.

Clarifying Our Intentions

It’s easy to spend most of our waking hours following a mindless pattern of habitual behaviors. Everyday we have to do this or that, or get up at a certain time for jobs or kids, or exercise classes, etc. These are the habits that define our lives. They are like guard-rails on a highway overpass because these are things that we MUST do—they keep us in line, on task, at full-forward momentum to prevent us from overshooting our daily path on the way to fulfilling our life goals.

But because of that daily pattern frequency they become more automatic behaviors—learned habits—mechanical repetitions we slip into without much thought or consideration.

As our boredom and fatigue increase with task repetition we sometimes ask ourselves, “Are all of these habitual ‘doings’ necessary?” And the answer is usually ‘Of course they are or I wouldn’t be DOING them.’

And that’s the problem: Perhaps we haven’t defined our life’s purpose yet so that our daily efforts more accurately reflect our ‘clarified intentions’ rather than relying on mindless rote behaviors that get us through each day.

The biggest problem with automatic behaviors is that as Mark Twain suggests, ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. While contempt is a strong descriptor here it might simply suggest a loss of respect for the situation or relationship because of becoming overly familiar with it, but it can also mean that we lose interest in what we are doing and why we are doing it. We may fail to pay attention to what is actually happening during the process of what has become a repetitive behavior.

This subject that seems so simple and blasé is actually quite complex. To clarify your life’s intentions you need to first be aware of what your intentions actually are.

So what are your life’s intentions?

Are you on a journey toward greater self-awareness and soul-fulfillment or are you on a trajectory toward accumulating exterior rewards like wealth and accolades?
Are your relationships loving and nourishing or are they more purposeful and advantageous?
Are you so focused on an event at the end of the day that you lose interest in all the hours prior to it?
Are you excited and passionate about your life, and if not, WHY not?
Were you ONCE passionate about your life, and if you aren’t now, what changed?
What would make you excited to wake each morning, ready to dive into the day ahead?
Maybe that ‘BE HERE NOW’ philosophy is peeking at you from the sidelines of your life, but is it important enough to you to heed the call? (Coined by Ram Dass’ book title and teachings.)
I think it was Thich Nhat Hanh who got through to me on how important each moment is to increasing our awareness of LIFE itself, so I credit him with that awareness in me. Here are a few of his words on ‘mindfulness’:

“With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.”

“Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.”

“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the whole earth revolves — slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.”

***

When we clarify our intentions on how and why we live our lives, it enables us to refocus our efforts on what is most important to us. It also enables us to recognize the true miracle of each breath we take and the importance of each beautiful, sparkling sunrise that we witness.

Life is simply for living and appreciating its endless wonders. If you’re not feeling that yet, you will.