Reclaim forgotten power

Notice each of us is the authority in our own version of reality yet for varied reasons, tend to forget this and give our power away. Let this moment be a turning point. Its up to each of us to take responsibility to move our lives forward, to grow aware of and let go of what no longer serves our highest good and the good of all. Reclaiming inner power can involve starting to see ourselves as the beautiful, strong, bold, and courageous beings we are created to be, putting heartfelt knowing into action. Reclaiming power also happens each instance we choose to forgive and love what we are taught to fear or hate so we can move on and it no longer controls us. Blossoming into more of true divine nature is about growing in wisdom and maturity to decode the signs and signals we give ourselves. Love the journey.

Come Full Circle

(Image by  Mareh Kohen)

Notice at a given moment, you can only ever do "your best" based on your current insight, level or stream of consciousness. A focal point of awareness knows there is never anything wrong with you or how you do anything. How and what we see is simply a matter of perspective. Purpose and circle of compassion simply change (expand or contract) based on sense of self. So long as you view yourself as a separate individual, purpose is related to time and distance imagined to reach "success," in forms of a job, life role, sense of community or experience. As you tune into the Soul, and reframe 'coming full circle,' the only purpose is to love everything and everyone equally not only in mind, but also consistently in practice. There is nowhere to go, nothing to become. As it dawns love and acceptance are here now, one's circle of compassion expands. One gently stops recognizing difference or attempting to prove oneself, stops comparing and judging. Imagined boundaries dissolve. The ego mind could never understand for it cannot comprehend unity, equality or interconnectedness. The more you notice fear and/or love speaking through you, the more you come to notice the ego comes and goes whereas true divine Being is ever-present. As timeless Being takes the helm and navigates the ship (human body-mind), then choices change and love is the ultimate purpose and motivation in every area of your life. Trust and surrender are the compass. This does not often happen instantly, but it does happen. We are each like a stone skipping across the cosmic ocean, leaving ripples, deciding what stacks up, changing vibration in due course.

Equanimity is what you are

Notice the resistance that arises at the prospect of facing adversity. Sitting meditation in silence offers ideal conditions for preliminary practice, to develop tools to face what evokes discomfort, and yet, sitting as such is not the real thing. True meditation happens when you are amidst the action, the chaos, when you face impossible people, intense emotions, unavoidable situations. During such conditions, can you keep the mind in silence, solitude and peace? To do so, we must first raise awareness and stop attacking ourselves. Many of us have a mind split into a victim, rescuer and/or attacker for ourselves or "others". We may even change roles. Still, when we are fiercely equanimous, we do not perpetrate or yield to threats, do not cave at emotional manipulation or implications, remain unaffected from attacks and guilt-trips that come from our superego, our own unconscious. We dissolve it by refusing to ratify it. By calmly abiding, we see through the unreal. The ego mind attacks, would like us feel bad about ourselves, stuck in a spiral. The only way out of it is to stop being an ego self, be unaffected by desire or fear, pain or enjoyment. Our true practice is to come to view suffering as a mental exercise. Most of us are taught to fear death, pain and other challenges. Yet, to a Zen master, all are great blessings. The view is our enemies are our greatest gifts to evoke love, passion, forgiveness, self-empowerment in the realisation of the unity of all that is. They guide us to let go of the ego mind, that which would like to be in pain, to be in a state of inadequacy, guilt, shame, attacking or peaceless self -justification or self-reproach. These are all false relationships with the real. The Supreme Being is within us. Only through awareness and alignment with Soul can we claim this power. A guru cannot give it. Mantras or other spiritual practices do not give it. One must claim it and with the power of will, integrate it into our life. It happens when we are in a state of deep honesty and truthfulness with ourselves. If we allow it, our inner voice can sting us worse than a sword. Let us focus on remaining in unwavering stillness. Let us not react, but move instead into that state that dissolves into the pureness of our Being which is love. Let us follow our breath. Get into the mind of silent presence. This vital life force, or equanimity is what you are and it cannot be lost.

Love brings clarity

Notice love invites us to remove the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we can no longer accept or live within. The path of removing our masks, requires dismantling the life we have come to think is real, tolerating pain, and seeing through our suffering. What makes the journey worth it is we long for reality more than we want to hide inside illusions of those masks. Recall the story of the Golden Buddha. The gold of this buddha was hidden for centuries under simple plaster and clay. It went unnoticed, a reminder it seems natural we develop layers of ego coverings, that we learn ways of hiding, enhancing and ignoring our True Self. When we feel really fearful, the covering gets thicker, more solid. We add layers to what is always here and do not recall the gold. We are identified with the coverings and forget the Truth of Being, our genuineness. Turns out, "real" is not how we are made. Its not our outer coverings symbolized by plaster and clay. Something more formless, intrinsic and pure is awake. As we shine the light of awareness on the plaster coverings, we bring the warmth of love, humor, acceptance to those coverings. This is what melts them so golden authenticity shines through. As we grow more mindful of our patterning (represented by the coverings), we realize the illusion of the anxious, needy, lonely self. It dawns the underlying radiance is more true to who we are than the clay coverings. Wakefulness, openness, creativity, aliveness only shine through as we allow maturity, inner wisdom to reign. The poet Rumi reminds us that is is through love that pain transforms into medicine. We are our own healers that transform into beauty and goodness with perfect timing. We know we are supposed to love ourselves into healing, to face the ego states and love ourselves through it. The most fundamental layer of conditioning is the one that does not recognize the painful coverings are illusions. We hate ourselves for the coverings. We are supposed to love the coverings, the parts of the ego that make it hard to open tour heart to ourselves. When negative emotions arise, we are taught to dislike or hate ourselves, and the master emotion, shame shows its head as if "something is wrong with me/us". Every emotion has its place and can get amplified. We are culturally- rigged with a deep fear of judgement and rejection. Whatever comes up, we come to believe we shouldn't be feeling this way. The core feeling of badness imprisons us in the mind until we are ready to let go of the covering that glues itself to all other coverings. In the stress of life, we forget the subjectivity and realness of each other. The key to being real is to remove layers of conditioning, to listen more attentively to each other. The messages of bad "other" repeat. Shame is exacerbated by cultural caste systems. We are wired to not like our own conditioning and think that is who we are. The healing comes from seeing and loving the conditioning so it can become more transparent though we have an aversion to it. The gold of loving awareness is always available, much like the sun is always here regardless of how many clouds exist in the sky. Through love, all pain and suffering dissolve. Clarity remains.

Honour Yourself

Notice what it is to honour yourself. To honour oneself means that we care and show ourselves as much love and kindness as we might show others, even treat ourselves better than we imagine others would like to be treated. Does it ever feel like you are more present for others, that you are more connected and in tune with the needs of those around you or that you want to please everyone? We are all helping each other along a winding road. We are crossing the abyss that separates us from our true selves. Journeying to and through the heart space is perhaps the most transformative of all journeys. This is about growing aware of and letting go of all we are not. There is so much conditioinng that exists to separate us from ourselves and each other. When the challenging situations arise, our first response may be to ignore this, attempt to get rid of discomfort, judge ourselves for it, view ourselves as a failure. Recall the story of Buddha shooting 2 arrows. The first arrow represents the painful emotions we want to escape or send away. We shoot the second arrow because we dislike our insecure, anxious, failing self. In essence, the tendency is to blame ourselvs for the experience. When its a habit to shoot those second arrows, or in other words, revert to a habit of judging ourselves, we are creating an abyss that is locking us in our self-created suffering. It solidifies our identity as a bad self, creates that undercurrent that "there is something wrong with me." The reality is that any self-aversion creates an abyss that separates us from others, and obscures reality. The answer is always to love ourselves, to love and accept ourselves into the freedom we tell ourselves we long for. Depending on our outlook, the outcome changes. Everything comes back to love. Its who we are and everything guides us back to the truth we know and feel in the heart.