“One truth you must consider. You are only as expansive, successful, joyous, peaceful and free as you truly love and accept yourself.”
~ Joseph
“When we are able to take one step peacefully and happily, we are working for the cause of peace and happiness for the whole of humankind.” Thich Nhat Hahn
I want to invite you to join me and walk the Earth in peace.
I am sure you have noticed that the world seems uneasy. Each of us walking peacefully is needed.
You can start by bringing awareness to your body as it moves. Notice your feet touching the floor or ground, feel your spine in action, be aware of your senses sensing. See what happens when you slow down enough to pay attention this way.
You can become mindful of your steps as you walk on the planet, as you approach work, as you move to your computer or reach for your phone, as you shop in the grocery store, as you enter into the room where someone you care about is, as you visit places in your community, as you go from room to room, and as you make your way towards your bed at night.
Each step you take shapes your experience.
You can walk peacefully when:
Welcome to 2013. What lies ahead is unknown but one things is for certain - you will be the creators of your experience. Exciting isn’t it?
What matters to you?
What has purpose and passion for you?
What inner messages are waiting to guide you forward?
Who do you want to become over the next 36O plus days?
What are you committed to make happen this year?
No, this is not a mythical story about a guy coming down from a mountaintop. It is more about the basics of what you need to keep in mind to live a vibrant and healthy life. (Thought you might appreciate these ideas for 2013)
These commandments may actually be more useful than the original ten in stone. More useful because they are about the well-being of your mind, your heart, your body and your spirit.
One day in my early 20’s something became very clear to me. I was walking up a long set of stairs and was breathing hard. I made a clear decision in that moment to be healthy and keep fit.
I made that decision because I wanted a long and vibrant life. I knew then that my choices about my well-being would shape the rest of my life.
Since that day my study and exploration of health and fitness has been a key part of my life. I have learned there are a number of universally important ways of being in the world that optimize health.
The following are 10 Commandments For Healthy Living. I offer them as a guideline for you in creating a life of true health and well-being.
Each day is a new day. This moment is totally fresh if you don’t bring thoughts from the past or worries about tomorrow to clog it all up. In this moment you can create whatever experience you want.
You don’t have to be haunted by a past relationship, or something you felt you should have done better. This moment is free to be fully experienced as wonderful moment in your life.
Too often you can show up with a trail of regrets and disappoints and fill what could be amazing with what wasn’t. Have you ever done that? It doesn’t have to be that way.
You can let all that isn’t happening go. You can release the past hurts and regrets. If you don’t, you carry them with you. Then you miss out on what good things are happening because you are too busy with what went wrong.
Living moment by moment makes if possible to enjoy the gift of the present. The present is truly where:
The big thought I had in mind for today is. “I am in the universe; the universe is in me.”
I am not sure where I first heard this idea. It might have been at a presentation by Deepak Chopra a few years ago. The idea that the universe is in me challenged my imagination to make sense of such an amazing possibility.
In my attempts to comprehend the vastness of this idea I explored visualizing the universe inside of me. These visualizations took me into very expansive places that filled me with energy and aliveness.
The best way to get a sense of what I am talking about is for you to have a similar experience. Here is the practice I use:
Holy Mole there has been a surge of interesting motivation running through me recently. I already workout and write everyday but I find myself wanting to do more.
Maybe writing a novel in November got the juices flowing. Wow that was fun as I wrote about my life in the future through the main character.
Maybe the frustration of feeling like my workouts have flattened out and pushed a get-into-gear button inside. Holiday sweets are looming and the beltline could be booming.
Or maybe my now 15 months of inner work since moving here has activated new levels of life force for whatever I do. This has been a most amazing life-altering and awakening stretch. I feel so alive and filled with joy.
Do you ever come to the end of a day and wonder where your day went and why you didn’t get more done? Maybe you were distracted. Consider this: Was your distraction self-induced?
By self-induced I mean you were doing things that spent the minutes of your day unconsciously. Examples could include time spent on: Facebook, Twitter, surfing the Web, playing video games, rehashing past dialogues, watching TV mindlessly, too much time viewing sports/movies/YouTube, stuck in the habit of worrying, and wasting time doing things that don’t matter to you.
December is near and so is the end of the year. All the talk and ideas about this being a great time of change has been interesting because speculation creates expectation and expectations feeds the collective mind to expand.
Can you feel the activation for change in you and around you? A kind of evolutionary call seems to be going across the planet.
Humanity appears to want to rise up and move to a richer more expanded expression.
· Can you feel the joy in your heart as it moves toward expansion?
· Have you sensed that you and many others are collectively tapping into this aptitude for compassion, for consciousness and for awakening?
· What other ways do you sense a call to further express who you are?
There are a number of ways or paths you can explore if you want to feed and grow your expansion.
One day after a very expansive experience, I decided to go looking for people that have had similar experiences. It was my good fortune to find a number of resources including books, interviews, videos and audios and even several live presentations. In these resources a number of people shared their experiences of awakening and self-realization. One of the insights that stood out for me is what I want to share with you today.
You and I live in a dynamic ever-changing world and we are in constant response to our thoughts and the world around us. In those responses there are basically two reactions. One reaction is to open and be receptive to what is present. The other reaction is to contract and close down to what is present. We are either opening or closing, expanding or contracting in all we encounter.
November is National Novel Writing Month. This is my third year participating in this adventure. The goal is to complete a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. My two previous novels sit here on my computer. One day I will self-publish the first one.
The second novel was a story that was fun to write but very personal. I noticed it stayed with me after I finished it. Traces of the story seem to become part of a greater reality for me.
As I began plans for this novel I decided to approach it in a unique way. I would use it to influence my mind - especially my unconscious mind in ways to heal my past, to invite new possibilities of experiences, to encourage the expansion of my consciousness and to assist me in growing my abilities to be present, be aware and be more self-realized.
Recently something became very clear to me. I have known this idea for many years but it has taken time for me to really understand the impact of this statement: We shape our experience of life moment-by-moment by our thinking.
We all have the opportunity to live a life of joy and happiness. It is a choice we make throughout each day. If joy is not the choice then the results often included suffering. Suffering is a product of our mind running us, not us running our mind.
The following is a summarization of the mental obstacles to living a joyous life:
If you want to know if you are addicted to doing, here’s the test: Take 30 minutes and do nothing. Watch how your body reacts. Notice where your thoughts go and notice what feelings get stirred up.
As you do nothing: your mind races, your body feels uncomfortable and your emotions are like a rollercoaster. Just like the addicts I use to work with in my previous job.
Actually these reactions are not generated by a true addictive withdrawal but more by the ego-mind feeling it’s loosing control.
Today I have a special message just for you. Yes you, the person reading this. You might wonder, “How do I know you?
Well to keep this simple, let’s say I know you because you and I are one. We share the same collective consciousness. Our souls are connected. Our hearts have the same infinite love waiting to be expressed. We come from the same source.
I could go on but I think you get the picture. Beyond our separate stories there is so much we share.
Not only do I know you, I know what is possible within you. That is why I am writing to you today
Remember that song from the 60's? You can hear it here. The song was about a world with too little love in it when there could be so much more.
That song is right and you know it. What of the world’s problems wouldn’t be so much better off with a big dose of love? I am not talking that mushy stuff. I am talking about the kind of love that is without conditions, that is endless, and that resides in our hearts waiting each day for a fuller expression.
Can you feel that call of love?
Warning: Reading this can throw a wrench into how you view yourself and the world.
I was standing around a fire with some friends as our weekly morning men’s group was coming to an end. We were offering intentions to the fire as is the tradition in the world of sacred fires. Fires of this nature are wonderful for releasing the past, and seeding intentions for the future.
I joined in. I wish for safety and success for friends as they headed off to lead a shamanic journey to sacred sites in Mexico. I also offered intentions for the well-being of all on the planet and as I always do, for peace in the world. When it came to personal intentions, I drew a blank and didn’t think much of it.
As I was driving home this phrase came to me with resonating clarity, “No Me.”
I looked at myself in the mirror and had to smile. I have never felt more alive and filled with such joy. These past 14 months of retreat here at the Oregon coast have been such a wonderful gift.
We moved here because my intuition told me where to go. This inner voice even picked out a place for us to live. The house is imperfect like us but the beauty and grace of the natural world is pure perfection.
I have read and written, explored, meditated, walking in awareness and just been at peace for most of the retreat. Over the last couple of months everything began to shift as I move from exploring expansive ideas to being expanded.
Today was a very sunny day here at the coast, actually warm if you sat in the sun. I decided to do an experiment in being aware in the moment. I hope this account of awareness might show you what you can notice by being fully present.
The noise of the ocean was present in waves of sound
My stomach talked to me about what I had for lunch
The warmth of the sun on my skin was comforting
I felt the chilled breeze off the Pacific as it surrounded me
There were moments of stillness and then thoughts coming and going
Crows always had something to say
