Lao-tzu & 7 ways to expand your Higher Self

Lao-tzu invites you to explore the condition of complete simplicity.  What brings you to a new level of understanding?  Who were you before?  Who are you now?  Who will you be?

Notice how you conceptualize and express ideas and whether you stay in harmony with your nature.  Raising your awareness allows you to meld into a timeless process and sense your own choices between love and fear. To feel profoundly within yourself allows you to exert effort and dream effortlessly, as if you do nothing yet, accomplish everything.  

1) Value silence & solitude.  Be still, quiet.  Allow your mind to flow freely.  Discern what it means to live with conviction.  Learn that focusing on what you sense outside prevents you from discovering what lies within.  Trust your own nature.   Live an unhurried life. Contemplate all that you have, all that flows in and out of your life, and be grateful for it.

2) Heed the laws of nature.   The more man interferes with the natural order of things, the more out of balance his perception of the world becomes, and the more emotional turbulence distracts him.  Discomfort arises from the interfering and unappreciative mind.  The essence of life is cyclical yet, rebirth or renewal is disguised in the form of endings which evoke pain and fear.  Natural endings bring new beginnings.  How you feel and act attracts more of the same.  Assume responsibility for your own actions.

3) Resist naming things.   Names are only the effects of your subtle thoughts and feelings.  To move beyond the pull to name is to begin to sense the underlying cause of your impulse.  Each thing you name tells you things about your desires, what you will allow and resist.  Why seek to control? Notice your reflex to separate rather than connect things.  The process of naming prompts us to distinguish between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, high and low, and "being" and "non- being." Comparing evokes desires. To abandon what you think you know requires you stop naming, isolating tastes and desires.

4) Experience pleasure as you are.  Struggling is counterproductive. Endeavor to do nothing. This isn't laziness. It doesn't suggest you reamin idle.  Instead, learn to discern your true nature.  Observe your views of people, institutions, and ingrained systems of rewards.  You are not happy or worthy because someone tells you or gives you a diploma.  You're not moral or righteous because you obey imposed laws.  You are moral because you connect with your inner self.  Pleasure lies in spontaneity.

5) Live creatively.  Know that you are a Divine creation.  Get in touch with this origin.  Listen to your inner calling.  Ignore what other people might criticize or judge about your ability, intelligence and potential.  Follow your heart and engage in whatever enables you to feel most alive.  Manifest based on what evokes good feelings inside you.  

6) Live beyond ego.  Basing your awareness on acquiring and accomplishing suggests you only exist for yourself.  By putting yourself last, you end up progressing further than you ever thought possible.  Getting caught in ego means you're caught in striving but never arriving.  Remove yourself from the rat race.  Reverse the ego's hold over you.  Generously serve others.  Whenever ego convinces you things aren't good enough, shift your attention to a less fortunate individual.  The perceived need for approval and importance are trouble.  Let go of your identification with stuff.  Believe you are nothing, and own nobody.  Permit yourself to realize your worldly self isn't your true self. 

7) Become aware of existence beyond form.  Learn to see without eyes.  Evolve to hear without ears.  Move beyond perceived limits of your senses.  Tap into this immeasurable, invisible source of harmony.  Enter the indescribable place, the core of energy and forever.  Conflict is impossible.  Magic connects you to something bigger.  Release the hold outer forms have on you.  Embrace the timeless infinity beyond all that.  

4 Ideas to help trigger more "ah-ha" moments

We've all been there. You can hear a penny drop in the silence as you to realize something makes sense in your life that didn't before. The truth is passed on and grasped through life experience. You may describe personal revelations as "ah-ha" moments, those instances when you gain profound insight to raise your soul-level awareness.

Yet, how can you connect with your soul in ways that will generate more positive developments in your life? You may be eager to reframe unresolved feelings and confusing events. To become an astute witness, you must learn to step back from your conditioned mind.  Consider these ideas to help trigger more "ah-ha" moments:  

1) Choose to not to view yourself as 'victim.'  Its a reflex to attribute blame, to judge about what you perceive was wrong with a person or a situation, and to complain how you suffer.  This attitude diverts focus from growth, nurtures negative energy and further disillusions you from the truth. Choose instead to step outside a victim mentality. Imagine how others  may interpret your behavior outside your emotional reactions or assumptions. Transform your energy.  Focus on positives in the "big picture" and learn.

2) Train your instincts to detect substance. Sharpening intuition enables you to connect your feelings with meaning behind your actions. In order to discern underlying meanings for your choices, review your behavior from an outsider's view.  How compatible are your behaviors with your views of love and forgiveness? Do your choices bring you closer to or alientate you from unconditional self-acceptance, spontaneous self-expression, and honesty? Each time someone or something evokes discomfort, its a clue to issues of substance in need of your attention.  Although your instinct may be to defend your spirit as you sense it now, you can learn new ways to preserve and nurture it.

3) Recognize the value of people as mirrors. All your friends, family, lovers and strangers, are like mirrors. How you react to them and conditions reflects parts of your personality. Learning why people behave as they do toward you mirrors what you are hiding from your conscious self.  How people treat you reveals a lot about how you treat them.  If you aren't getting the treatment you desire or hope for, then reflect on the nature of your behavior.  Does history repeat? Have you done this before or has someone done this to you with similar results?  This is a conscious and unconscious process.

4) Determine 'the real you.'  As you discover your strengths, weaknesses, and patterns, this helps you figure out who you are beneath appearances.  It all shapes self-confidence, esteem, self-worth and to what degree you permit unconscious fears to control you. As you admit underlying motives or, why you act as you do, and discern if your action confirms your intent, you grow to get in touch with your authentic self.

5 Ways to live openly with apparent duality

To live without judgement is to allow apparent duality while sensing the value in everything.  Rearrange your thoughts so that the sharp edges of life go right through you.  Wisdom is knowing you are nothing.  Those who know keep quiet, live impartially, do not discriminate.  We can evolve to learn more about the unsentimental sort we are:

1) Live a unified life. Our standards of perception are grounded in the physical world.  Comtemplate that criticism isn't always necesary or helpful.  Choose to be at peace with what you observe.  Move freely without attachment to outcomes.  Forget ideas of where you think you should be.  Its all illusion. Trying itself only exists because of beliefs of not trying exist.   Decide to approach every situation with an unbiased attitude.

2) Choose not to explain yourself.  Sense the texture of misunderstanding that you create.  Don't get caught up in what you've conditioned to think is right or wrong.  Be in paradoxical unity.  Positive and negative are opposites that need each other to exist.  Practice being a living paradox.  Ignore how others might like to direct your life energy.  Your body is physical, apparently limited, and at the same time, you are invisible and limitless.  You can surrender to the energy within you.  Accept the duality of the material world while still feeling connecting to the completeness of yourself.  Release resistence to your natural talents.  Love is knowing you are everything.  You teach without words.

3) Practice not doing.  When action is pure and selfless, you are changing your thinking. Your world changes as the result.  Pursuit of status, power, objects, blinds ourself to stems on our ego's fixation of getting more.  refrain from focusing on this kind of discontented less. Practice gratitude. Ask how you can serve. This isn't suggesting to be lazy or inactive.  Choose to be directed by a higher intention than your ego-filled desire.

4) Accept happiness is.  Examine your state of happiness in this moment.  Desires can create competitiveness. Why expect external events to create your joy? The necessary factors will all come together. Everything you need now is here, accessible, along with your all-incompassing source of well-being.  No one is better than anyone else.  Those who refuse to change their lives elevate themselves above people they feel are less worthy. Stay centred and in harmony. Eliminate as many judgements as you can. See aspects of yourself in all others.  Work thourgh your issues. Your criticism will dissolve.

5) Trust the perfection of the infinite.  Connect yourself to the limitless source of energy that flows through you.  Allow the universe to flow through you. Spend each moment deliberately.  Imagine yourself guided by the infinite aspects of yourself.  Don't let your desires control you.  Watch for opportunities.  Be grateful for the ways that are revealed for you at that moment.  When action is pure and selfless, everything settles the way it should.  Watch how all that you give returns to you.  Stop the chase. Be an astute observer. The more you pursue ego desires, the more they will elude you.

Journey back to love

You may not realize you are on a healing journey back to experience unconditional love and compassion.  This process requires that you take steps to discover and come-to-terms with your inner wounds.  Didn't know you had any?

You are invited to explore everything about yourself, including the reasons behind your mindsets.  Certain aspects of yourself are imbalanced and would benefit from re-alignment.  Life offers opportunities to re-balance your perceptions and your self-view.

1) Teach yourself to discern emotional wounds.    As you discern reasons for your own discomfort, you evolve to a position where you can decide to take steps to heal yourself.  If you choose, you can also share your lessons learned and assist others to heal.

2) Develop your compassion.  The ability to develop a more positive attitude about your own life and conditions enables you to further your healing process and also to develop new insight into compasion for the suffering of others. 

3) Embrace everything.  The aim is not to deny or reject anything about your life, but to embrace all experiences and the benefits they bring.  What you perceive as positive or negative always has a polar opposite which contributes to balance.

4) Explore alternative therapies.  Techniques like Reiki, transference healing,  dream analysis, soul therapy, chiropractic and various approaches to healing with hands can be useful to your healing process.  Learn more about options that will help you achieve your own balance.   Its all about self-acceptance, reassureance and encouragement.

Allan and Barbara Pease &10 behavioral revelations

Allan and Barbara Pease are experts in human relations and body language.  They have sold over 20 million books including, Why Men Don't Listen and Why Women Don't Read Maps, Why Men Lie and Women Cry, Why Men Don't Have a Clue and Women Always Need More Shoes, and The Definitive Book of Body Language: how to read others' thoughts by their gestures.  They're also popular public speakers. I have had the pleasure of being in th audience of some of their events and always come away with gems of wisdom.  This has real relevance and staying power.

Even if you have never heard of these people, these 10 tips taken from their books will trigger your own "ah-ha" moments.  After all, as you dream, devise a plan and proceed unconsciously, its your underlying thoughts and emotions that determine how your vision or dream unfolds: 

1) Being perceptive means being able to spot contradictions between someone's words and their body language. (Being self-aware means discerning these things in yourself).

2) For a man, success in the mating game relies on his ability to read the signals being sent to him, as opposed to being able to initiate.  Women's difficulty in finding partners isn't about reading signals, its more about finding a partner who will match their criteria.

3) Modern humans are worse at reading body signals than their ancestors because we are now distracted by words.

4) When a person's words and body language are in conflict or contradict, women ignore what is said.  Men react differently.

5) Submissive dogs reveal their throats.  Humans reveal their palms.  The position of your hands on your arms, legs or in the air actually reveals if you're being honest with yourself.

6) A natural smile produces characteristic wrinkles around the eye--insincere people smile only with their mouth.

7) Science proves the more you smile, the more positive reactions others will give you. (Good advice is to smile constantly. Everyone will wonder what you're up to.)

8) The older human beings become, the more serious they become.  An adult laughs an average of 15x/ day while preschoolers laugh  more than 400x/day.

9) People drink alcohol and take drugs to try to feel how happy people feel normally.

10) When the mind closes, the physical body follows.  The question is, do you notice the real meaning behind gestures or choose to beat your head against the wall?