Current Readings | Philosophy
📍The 8-Limbed Path of Yoga
(1) 5 YAMAS (skillful outward conduct)
Ahimsa - non-harming
Release the negative word, thought, gossip toward yourself, toward others. Notice how this frees you. Consider how your words + actions affect others.
Satya - truthfulness
Seeing things as they are, not as you want them to be. The truth heals. It is enough.
Asteya - non-stealing
Rooted in lack of faith in ourselves, “I’m not good enough.” - Nothing is missing. No mistakes were made. You are complete. We are taking from others when we don’t rise up in our full glory.
Brahmacharya - the right use of energy
Where are you going to put your personal energy into? Drawing your attention away from things you choose to not attend to.
Aparigraha - non-attachment
Do it with all your heart — and let go of what might come.
Our greatest spiritual lesson ~
What we try to possess possesses us.
The art of letting go and living life with open palms, an open mind, open heart, so that all things, concepts or people enter, exist and exit effortlessly without creating bondage or dependency.
If you realize that all things change — are in a constant state of flux— there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
We learn from every aspect of our being — the light and the dark.
Here, we are offered so much freedom — the freedom to work and do what we love without worrying about the outcome, the freedom to rely less on external and material possessions to bring us happiness, and the freedom to experience everything life has to offer.
(2) 5 NIYAMAS (peace +confidence-building inner conduct)
Saucha - purity, clearness
What contents, people, media are you taking in that may be weakening your inner fabric?
Santosha - content, highest form of happiness
An inside state, independent of outside conditions.
Tapas - self discipline
Ignite inner fire. The courage to shut down self doubt, the negative voice, building self trust + inner fortitude.
Svadhyaya - self study
Know thyself. Knowing moment by moment how to choose what is best for you. Better choices. Shifting, moving, allowing you to move away from negativity, bring in more energy, vibrate higher, feel alive & balanced.
Ishvara Prandihana - Surrender
Fully present in what you’re doing, bringing all your energy to that moment.
Worrying about things you have no control over is a main cause of our ‘dukkha’ or ‘suffering’.
Transcend the conditioning, worries, perceptions judgements, and false stories. Surrender to what is. Trust in Spirit, harness courage to express yourself for who you are, as you are, with all of your perfect imperfections = freedom
(3) Asana - a ‘steady, comfortable seat’
Use the body as a vehicle to connect to Spirit, to the center, a steady seat, infinity. Practice comfort in the discomfort.
Find the right amount of effort, not too much, not too little. Find gravity in your center.
(4) Pranayama - vital life force energy I expansion
Most tangible doorway into working with your own energy - alchemy
Energizes, relaxes and heals the body; moves blocked energy (chi)
A mantra, a calming point of focus for the mind.
(5) Pratyahara - withdrawal of the senses
One stops reaching out through the senses toward external stimuli. Energy and attention is directed inward toward your own heart and mind.
Bridges the gap from external to internal.
(6) Dharana - focused concentration
Willful effort to focus the mind to one single point. Ideas: Tratak - candle gazing; visualization, focusing on the breath.
(7) Dhyana - meditative absorption
Once one has mastered dharana (concentration), the practice becomes natural, graceful. You immerse with the present moment.
(8) Samadhi - bliss or enlightenment
Non-duality, moving past disturbances of the mind—more neutrality, less pendulum swinging with judgements, likes, dislikes. Seeing life as it is. Oneness.
March 25, 2024
The Creative Act I Rick Rubin
The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.
-Robert Henri
Feb. 14, 2024
Anatomy of the spirit
Heart Chakra
The fourth chakra is the center of the human energy system. Everything in and about our lives runs off the fuel of our hearts. We will all have experiences meant to “break our hearts”—not in half, but wide open. Regardless of how your heart is broken, your choices will always be the same: What will you do with your pain? Will you use it as an excuse to give fear more authority over you, or can you release the authority of the physical world over you through an act of forgiveness?
[…until the answer you give becomes your own liberation.]
…we are continually directed to discover and love ourselves. This love is the essential key to finding happiness that we are convinced lies outside of ourselves, but the spiritual texts remind us is only found within.
[the only path to spiritual consciousness is through the heart.]
Jan. 9, 2024
The Book of Awakening
Growing Inside the Song
I saw a woman singing while pregnant and imagined how the rhythms of song affected the life forming within her; imagined the song drawing her unborn child’s soul closer to its time in the world, the way light works on a root strengthening underground.
I watched her sing and realized that the life within her was growing inside the song. I looked around the room, for we were in a circle song, and everyone’s singing was bringing their soul closer to its time in the world. The nervous man was less nervous while singing, and the insecure woman next to me was relaxing her unworthiness as she sang, and I was able to drop my replaying of woulds while my mouth was open and my eyes were closed.
It was then I realized that regardless of the words or the melody, this effort to sing is a way to open the passageways between what is growing within and what is growing without.
Nov. 26, 2023
The Book of Awakening
In Our Own Element
A fish cannot drown in water.
A bird does not fall in air.
Each creature God made
must live in its own true nature —Mechthild of Magdeburg
All we have to do is put the fish in air and the bird in water to see the dangers of being what we are not. Of course, it is very clear and obvious for both the fish and the bird where they belong. Not so for us humans.
Part of the blessing and challenge of being human is that we must discover our own true God-given nature. This is not some noble, abstract quest, but an inner necessity. For only by living in our own element can we thrive without anxiety. And since humans beings are the only life form that can drown and still go to work, the only species that can fall from the sky and still fold laundry, it is imperative that we find that vital element that brings us alive.
asana I steady seat
Sept. 5, 2023
The Untethered Soul
What if all you had to do to avoid [negative cycles] was to let of go in the beginning? If you had, you would have gone up instead of down. That’s how it works. When a blockage gets hit, it’s a good thing. It’s time to open up internally and release the blocked energy. If you let go, and permit the purification process to take place inside that blocked energy will be released. When it’s released and allowed to flow up, it becomes purified and merges back into your center of consciousness. This energy then strengthens you instead of weakening you You begin to go up and up, higher and higher, and you learn the secret of the ascent. The secret of the ascent is to never look down—always look up.
ahimsa I non-harming
July 12, 2023
Anatomy of the Spirt ~ Sacral Chakra
Paradoxically, while all the energy of the second chakra inclines us to try to control our lives, the lesson of the second chakra is that we cannot be in control. We are physical beings and energetic beings, but since the physical world cannot be controlled, the task before us is to master our inner responses to the external world, our thoughts and emotions.
Nevertheless, we all struggle in a seemingly never-ending cycle of disappointment in which we attempt to control our lives. we search endlessly for the one grand choice that will put everything in our lives in permanent order, halting the motion of change long enough to establish final control over everyone and everything. is that the right choice of career? Is that the right marriage partner? The right geographic location? In seeking this one right choice constantly, we give form to our fear of the changing rhythm that is life itself. In looking for the single external person or thing that will forever bring us peace, stability, love and health, we dismiss the more authentic power that lies “behind our eyes and not in front of them.”
The truth contained in within the paradoxical nature of this dualism is this: It is not what we choose that matters; our power to influence an outcome lies in our reasons for making a certain choice.
The challenge of the second chakra is to learn what motivates us to make the choices we do. IN learning about our motivations, we learn about the content of our spirits. Are you filled with fear or are you filled with faith?
sacral chakra I Svadhisthana
June 7, 2023
The Book of Awakening
‘Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind singing in your veins.’ - John Welwood
When starting out, I wanted so badly to become a poet that I held it in view like some hill I needed to climb to see from. But getting to the top, something was missing, and so I had to climb the next hill. Finally, I realized I didn’t need to climb to become a poet—I was a poet.
The same thing happened with love. I wanted so badly to become a lover, but climbing through relationships like hills, I realized again that I was a lover all along.
Now I understand that all these incarnations come alive in us when we dare to live the days before us, when we dare to listen to the wind singing in our veins. We carry the love and wisdom like seeds and the days sprout us.
moksha
May 10, 2023
Anatomy of the Spirit
The Sixth Chakra / The Power of the Mind
In becoming conscious, one is able to detach from subjective perceptions and see the truth or symbolic meaning in a situation. Detachment does not mean ceasing to care. It means stilling one’s fear-driven voices. One who has attained an inner posture of detachment has a sense of self so complete that external influences have no authority within his or her consciousness. Such clarity of self and mind is the essence of wisdom.
detachment
May 8, 2023
Anatomy of the Spirit
The Sixth Chakra / The Power of the Mind
Consciousness is the ability to release the old and embrace the new with the awareness that all things end at the appropriate time and that all things begin at the appropriate time. “Flow with it",” the Tao Te Ching counsels, and not against it.
nonattachment / impersonal mind
April, 2023
Book of Awakening
I’ve never felt a pain that didn’t bear a blessing.
As the sun always rises just when the night seems like it will never end, as the sky holds everything flying and everything falling, there is something indestructible at the center of each of us.
higher vibration
March 14, 2023
Buddha’s Brain - First & Second Darts
Some physical and mental discomforts are unavoidable. These are the “first darts” of life.
First darts are unpleasant to be sure. But then we add our reactions to them. These reactions are "second darts"--the ones we throw ourselves. Most of our suffering comes from second darts.
Second darts often trigger more second darts through associative neural networks.
As the saying goes, pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. If you can simply stay present with whatever is arising in awareness—whether it’s a first dart or second one—without reacting further, then you will break the chain of suffering.
2 darts I break suffering
March 7, 2023
“Please watch out for each other and love and forgive everybody. It's a good life, enjoy it.” - Jim Henson
saucha [Niyama] I purity
March 1, 2023
Anatomy of the Spirit
From an energy point of view, every choice that enhances our spirits strengthens our energy field; and the stronger our energy field, the fewer our connections to negative people and experiences.
svadhyaya [Niyama] I self study
February 25, 2023
Kabir
“Go deeper.
Past thoughts into silence.
Past silence into stillness.
Past stillness into the heart.
Let love consume all that is left of you.”
pratyahara [5th Limb] I withdrawal from the senses
February 25, 2023
Untethered Soul
A wise person remains centered enough to let go every time the energy shifts into a defensive mode. …relax and release… It just takes a moment of conscious effort to decide that you’re not going there. You just let go. It’s simply a matter of taking the risk that you are better off letting go than going with the energy.
The bigger it is, the higher the reward of letting go. That which is holding you down can become a powerful force that raises you up. When you’re free from the hold the energy has on you, you will be free to experience the joy and expansiveness that exists within you.
santosha [Niyama] I inner peace
January 25, 2023
Anatomy of the Spirit
If a person suffers from low self esteem, he or she cannot act on her intuitive impulses because her fear of failure is too intense. Intuition, like all meditative disciplines, can be enormously effective if, and only if, one has the courage and personal power to follow through on the guidance it provides.
Guidance requires action, but it does not guarantee safety. While we measure our own success in terms of our personal comfort and security, the universe measures our success by how much we have learned. So long as we use comfort and security as our criteria of success, we will fear our own intuitive guidance because by its very nature it directs us into new cycles of learning that are sometimes uncomfortable.
tapas [Niyama] I inner fire
January 9, 2023
Resilient
Going on a long hike, we need to bring food and other supplies. Similarly, on the road of life, we need psychological supplies such as compassion and courage. How do we get these supplies into the neural “backpack”?
We do it by learning.
About a third of our attributes are innate in our DNA, while the other two-thirds are acquired through learning. This is very good news, since it means we have great influence over who we became, who we learn to be.
building inner resources
November 10, 2022
Anatomy of the Spirit
Given your particular body, environment, and beliefs, will you make choices that enhance your spirit, or those that drain your power into the physical illusion around you?
solar plexus I personal power
October 17, 2022
The Untethered Soul
You truly can reach a state in which you do not have stress, tension or problems for the rest of your life. Life is giving you a gift. And, that gift is the flow of events that takes place between your birth and your death. These events are exciting, challenging, and create tremendous growth. To comfortably handle this flow of life, your heart and mind must be open and expansive enough to encompass reality. The only reason they are not is because you resist. Learn to stop resisting reality, and what used to look like stressful problems will begin to look like stepping stones of your spiritual journey.
ease I “relaxing through resistance - beneficial to everything in your life”
nonattachment
October 15, 2022
The Untethered Soul
If you do not care, if you are no longer afraid of yourself, you are free. You will then be able to walk through this world more vibrant and alive than ever before. You will feel everything at a deeper level. Eventually you will understand that there is an ocean of love behind all of this fear and pain. That force will sustain you by feeding your heart from deep within.
expansion I freedom
October 5-12, 2022
I Am the Boundless Ocean
I am the boundless ocean.
This way and that,
The wind, blowing where it will,
Drives the ship of the world.
But I am not shaken.
I am the unbounded deep
In whom the waves of the worlds
Naturally rise and fall.
But I do not rise or fall.
I am the infinite deep
In whom all the worlds
Appear to rise.
Beyond all form,
Forever still.
Even so am I.
— Ashtavakra Gita
unknown Hindu master
ascension
June 7, 2022
The Untethered Soul
People can pick up on your energy, and you’re feeding them with this flow. If you are willing to open even more, it never stops. You can become a source of light for all those around you.
When you open, you bring more energy into the system and it can heal. Energy can heal, and that’s why love can heal. As you explore your inner energy, a whole world of discovery opens up to you.
The more important thing in life is your inner energy. If you’re always tired and never enthused, then life is no fun. But, if you’re always inspired and filled with energy, then every minute of every day is an exciting experience. Learn to work with these things. Through awareness and willful efforts, you can learn to keep your centers open. You do this by relaxing and releasing. You do this by not buying into the concept that there is anything worth closing over. Remember, if you love life, nothing is worth closing over. Nothing, ever, is worth closing your heart over.
from within, not without
June 2022
The Book of Awakening
“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision which no one could have dreamed would have come their way.” W.H.Murray
We’d all like a guarantee before making a decision or taking a risk, but the irony is that taking the risk is what opens us up to our fate. It’s like wanting to know what things taste like before putting them in your mouth. It just can’t be figured out that way.
I always seem to be relearning that real commitment comes before I know where anything is going. That’s what listening to your heart is all about. Without jumping out of your heart’s silence, love is never possible. Without asking to be whole, the divine essence waits inside everything the way bread hardens if never bitten into.
For me, as I look back, being a poet came after committing to speak though I had no idea what I needed to say, and the grace of being loved has come into my life after admitting freely that I wanted to love though I wasn’t sure how.
If we devote ourselves to the effort to be real, the Universe in all its forms will find us, the way that winds finds leaves and waves find shore.
trust
June 1, 2022
The Gifts of Imperfection
Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval...which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world -- our sense of belonging can never be greater than our sense of self-acceptance.
acceptance
May, 2022
The Untethered Soul
The heart is an energy center, and it can open or close. Closing is a habit, and just like any other habit, it can be broken. At first, it may seem unnatural since your innate tendency is to close as a means of protection. But closing your heart does not really protect you from anything; it just cuts you off from your source of energy. In the end, it only serves to lock you inside.
The alternative is to enjoy life instead of clinging to it or pushing it away. If you are willing to experience the gift of life instead of fighting with it, you will be moved to the depth of your being. This energy inspires you and raises you.
openness & vulnerability
April 13, 2022
Lao Tzu - Embody Water
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”
strength in surrender
Spring/Winter, 2022
Tao Wisdom, Letting Go
The Untethered Soul explains the expansive energy found in the Middle Way here.
This week it’s the Tao wisdom. 👁 The Middle Way is not diluting your energy swinging to extremes, but moving in harmony of the center. As you let go, your energy comes back to center, to you. The energies that used to be wasted swinging sideways will get pulled back into your bright center, to the present moment. The energy here is phenomenal.👁 Any situation, any challenge, is better navigated from this open place.
All things come, peak and pass.
Clear, alive, letting go.
March 13, 2022
Cherokee Story
A Cherokee elder was once asked how she had become so wise, so happy and so respected. She answered:
“In my heart, there are two wolves: a wolf of love and a wolf of hate. It all depends on which one I feed each day.”
What you focus on grows ~ Neuroplasticity
March 9, 2022
Backwards Law ~ Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
If pursuing the positive is a negative, then pursuing the negative generates the positive. The pain you pursue in the gym results in better all-around health and energy. The failures in business are what lead to a better understanding of what’s necessary to be successful. Being open with your insecurities paradoxically makes you more confident and charismatic around others. The pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust and respect in your relationships. Suffering through your fears and anxieties is what allows you to build courage and perseverance.
Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. …The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.
The Backwards Law
Valentines, 2022
Practical Neuroscience ~ Inclining the Mind
You were once a child, just as worthy of care as any other. Can you see yourself as a child? Wouldn’t you wish the best for that little person? The same is true today. You are a human being like any other—and just as worthy of happiness, love and wisdom.
remembrance
February 2, 2022
Untethered Soul, The Secret of the Middle Way
Everything has two extremes. The yin and the yang, expansion and contraction, nondoing and doing. And, from science we know that if you pull a pendulum thirty degrees to the right, it will swing back until it’s thirty degrees to the left.
The laws are the same, inner and outer . Since everything has its yin and yang, everything has its own balance point. It is the harmony of all these balance points, woven together, that forms the Tao… Its power is phenomenal. If you want to imagine the power of the Tao, examine how much energy is wasted swinging sideways.
As you let go, your energy comes back to center. You don’t follow the extremes, so your energy comes back to the current moment. You are able to use your energy for living life rather than to adjust for the pendulum swings.
With this energy flowing in you comes clarity.
When you move in the Tao, you are always present. Life becomes absolutely simple. Events will no longer seem confusing or overwhelming, no matter what they are.
The Tao
December 23, 2021
Untethered Soul
Things are going to happen to you, and you're going to feel the tendency to close. But, you have the choice to either go with it or let it go. Your mind will tell you it's not reasonable to stay open when these things happen. But, you have limited time left in your life, and what's really not reasonable is to not enjoy life.
joy
December 8, 2021
Buddha’s Brain
When your mind changes, your brain changes, too… When neurons fire together, they wire together—mental activity actually creates new neural structures. As a result, even fleeting thoughts and feelings can leave lasting marks on your brain, much like a spring shower can leave little trails on a hillside.
Because of the ways your brain changes its structure, your experience matters beyond its momentary subjective impact. It makes enduring changes in the physical tissues of your brain which affect your well-being, functioning and relationships. Based on science, this is a fundamental reason for being kind to yourself, cultivating wholesome experiences and taking them in.
hold space
October 14, 2021
This Morning ~
I Invite you into a place of ease.
This is a place where you are not thinking about doing, only doing.
Where time stops.
Out of the busy mind, into a breathing body and an intuitive heart.
This is a place where you find ease alongside your effort.
We'll begin the voyage via the breath, as we root first to rise to this place.
Just the breath in. Breathe back out.
Fill up. Spill out.
Once more,
Breathe in life, energy, space and abundance,
Release to find roots, a grounded presence.
ease
October 1, 2021
The Untethered Soul
Ultimately, every change in your energy flow, whether it’s agitation of the mind or shifts of the heart, will be what reminds you that you are back there noticing. Now what used to hold you down becomes what wakes you up. These trigger points will help remind you to remain centered. Eventually it will become quiet enough so that you can simply watch the heart begin to react, and let go before the mind starts. At some point in the journey, it becomes all heart, not mind. You will see that the mind follows the heart. …The mind doesn’t even get a chance to start up because you let go at the heart level. Now you are on your way. The very thing that was holding you in is now helping you out.
non-reactivity
August 18, 2021
The Untethered Soul
As you grow, you will realize that your attempts to protect yourself from your problems actually create more problems. If you attempt to arrange people, places, and things so that they don’t disturb you, it will begin to feel like life is against you. You’ll feel that life is a struggle and that every day is heavy because you to control and fight with everything. There will be competition, jealousy and fear. You will feel that anyone, at any moment, could cause you disturbance. That makes life a threat. That’s why you have to worry so much. That’s why you have all these dialogues going on inside your mind. You’re either trying to figure out how to keep things from happening, or you’re trying to figure out what to do because they did happen.
…The alternative is to decide not to fight with life. You realize that life is not under your control. ..and if you’re trying to control it, you’ll never be able to fully live it.
move energy
August 12, 2021
The Book of Awakening, pg. 242
Out from Under ~ All of the darkness! I’m going to walk into the light! -Job
Sometimes there’s just too much to consider, too much to understand and analyze, too many consequences to play out in our mind, too many things to clean, unpack, or repair before we can go out and play.
Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so—just walk out from under the webs we’ve spun, the tasks we’ve assumed, the problems we have to solve. They’ll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.
Lao Tzu: The three greatest treasures in life: Simplicity, Patience, Compassion
August 5, 2021
Alan Watts
This is a quote (of his love of the sea) that resonates for me as I feel this reflected in our own biology, the rhythm of our breath....we are moving stillness, infinity comprised one toss at a time ~
“Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it’s not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It’s timeless because I know I’m listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years. And it takes you out of the world of relentlessly ticking clocks.”
rhythm of breath
June 24, 2021
The Book of Awakening, pg. 58
I don’t know if it is human nature or the way of life on Earth, but we seldom become all of who we are until forced to it. Either by erosion from without or shedding from within—and often by both—we are forced to live more authentically. And once the crisis that opened us passes, the real choice then becomes: Will we continue such authentic living?
author’s experience…
“Death pushed me to the edge. Nowhere to back off. And to the shame of my fears, I danced with abandon in his face. I never danced as free. And Death backed off, the way dark backs off a sudden burst of flame. Now there’s nothing left, but to keep dancing. It is the way I would have chosen had I been born three times as brave.”
We are often called further into experience than we’d like to go, but it is this extra leap that lands us in the vibrant center of what it means to be alive.
renewal
June 16, 2021
The Book of Awakening, pg. 65
To Hold Nothing Back
I have found that hesitation, more than anything, has been the invisible hitch that has kept me from joy. I’ve found that the moment with all its meaning often moves on by the time I’ve reconsidered whether or not to enter it. I am not saying we should always be impulsive. More to the point, I have discovered, again and again, that I usually know what I need to do but just deny it, and it is this small hesitation, this small resistance to enter what is real, that makes life feel neutral or out of reach.
enter the flow
June 10, 2021
The Untethered Soul
When you open, you bring more energy into the system and it can heal. Energy can heal, and that’s why love can heal. As you explore your inner energy, a whole world of discovery opens up to you.
People can pick up on your energy, and you’re feeding them with this flow. If you are willing to open even more, it never stops. You can become a source of light for all those around you.
willingness
June 2, 2021
The Untethered Soul - the Tao
Since everything has its yin and yang, everything has its balance point. It is the harmony of all these balance points, woven together, that forms the Tao. It's power is phenomenal. if you want to imagine the power of the Tao, examine how much energy is wasted swinging sideways [like a pendulum between extremes].
As you let go, your energy comes back to center. You don't follow the extremes, so your energy comes back to the current moment. When you move in the Tao, you are always present. Life becomes absolutely simple.
tremendous energy in natural flow - the Tao
May 5, 2021
The Untethered Soul
Be willing to be fully present without being afraid of what will happen in the next moment. What actually gives life its meaning is the willingness to live it. It isn’t any particular event; it’s the willingness to experience life’s events.
unstuck
April 30, 2021
The Untethered Soul, page 124
What if all you had to do to avoid negative cycles was to let go in the beginning? If you had, you would have gone up instead of down. That’s how it works. When a blockage gets hit, it’s a good thing. It’s time to open up internally and release blocked energy. If you let go, and permit the purification process to take place inside, that blocked energy will be released. This energy then strengthens you instead of weakening you. You begin to go up and up, higher and higher, and you learn the secret of the ascent. The secret of the ascent is to never look down—always look up
look up
April 13, 2021
The Untethered Soul, page 172-3
When you are comfortable with pain passing through you, you will be free. If you do not care, if you are no longer afraid of yourself, you are free. You will then be able to walk through this world more vibrant and alive than ever before. You will feel everything at a deeper level. You will begin to have truly beautiful experiences rise up within you. Eventually you will understand that there is an ocean of love behind all this fear and pain.
fear not
April 1, 2021
The Untethered Soul, page 233
Things are going to happen to you, and you’re going to feel the tendency to close. But, you have the choice to either go with it, or let it go. Your mind will tell you it’s not reasonable to stay open when these things happen. But you have limited time left in your life, and what’s really not reasonable is to not enjoy life.
surrender
March 24, 2021
The Book of Awakening, page 237
When we stop struggling, we float.
When first learning how to swim, I didn’t trust the deep. No matter how many assuring voices I heard from shore, I strained and flapped to keep my chin above the surface. It exhausted me, and only when exhausted did I relax enough to immerse myself to the point that i would feel the cradle of the deep keep me afloat.
I’ve come to understand that this is the struggle we all replay between doubt and faith. When thrust into any situation over our head, our reflex is to fight with all our might, the terrible feeling that we are sinking. Yet the more we resist, the more we feel our own weight and wear ourselves out.
At times like this, I remember learning to float. Mysteriously, it required letting almost all of me rest below the surface before the deep would hold me up.
This is very hard to do. But the essence of trust is believing you will be held up if you let go. And though we can practice relaxing our fear and meeting the deep, there is no real way to prepare for letting go other than to just let go.
Once immersed, once below the surface, it is not by chance that things slow down, go clear, feel weightless.
resistance & struggle bring us down; let go to flow
March 16, 2021
The Book of Awakening, page 259
A river doesn’t hold all the water that passes through it.
The river is a good model. It doesn’t own the water that rushes by, yet it couldn’t be in more intimate relationship to it, as the force of what moves through shapes it. It is the same with everything we love. In truth, there is no point to holding on to the deepest things that matter, for they have already shaped us.
Often the the most useful gift we can give ourselves is to lay our lives open like a river.
paradox of patience
March 10, 2021
The Untethered Soul, pages 104, 125-126
A wise person remains centered enough to let go every time the energy shifts into a defensive mode. …relax and release… It just takes a moment of conscious effort to decide that you’re not going there. You just let go. It’s simply a matter of taking the risk that you are better off letting go than going with the energy.
The bigger it is, the higher the reward of letting go. That which is holding you down can become a powerful force that raises you up. When you’re free from the hold the energy has on you, you will be free to experience the joy and expansiveness that exists within you.
limitless mind
March 3, 2021
The Untethered Soul, pages 66, 70, 89
The heart is an energy center, and it can open or close. Closing is a habit, and just like any other habit, it can be broken. At first, it may seem unnatural since your innate tendency is to close as a means of protection. But closing your heart does not really protect you from anything; it just cuts you off from your source of energy. In the end, it only serves to lock you inside.
The alternative is to enjoy life instead of clinging to it or pushing it away. If you are willing to experience the gift of life instead of fighting with it, you will be moved to the depth of your being. This energy inspires you and raises you.
relax and open
