No Time

Once again I come to the realization that time is an illusion. There is no time. There are a series of Now moments, endless and perfect. Each one is timeless and together they are our experience of being.

I was lying in bed at 1:30 this morning, experiencing yet another hot flash and wondering if I would ever fall asleep and how much sleep I could possibly hope to have with the night progressing steadily on and my tossing and turning seeming interminable and suddenly I realized that there is no time. Time is an illusion and I was caught in it. I immediately relaxed into the knowledge that I had all the time I chose to have to sleep.

Eventually the hot flashes subsided as they do and I was able to sleep. I woke feeling well rested and even though I 'slept in' until just after 6:00, I was able to go for my customary dawn walk.

As I walked, I again felt the illusion of time. When we intentionally spend as many moments as possible in the zero point field of infinity and eternity, that endless Now that is so perfect, the illusion of time becomes quite obvious. Interestingly, clocks still tell their side of the story and employers still require promptness and timely efficiency. That's fine. We've been playing this game for years and years now - in one sense. (In another sense those years and years were an illusion. Doesn't it seem that they have all gone by in a flash?) We can dance in the manufactured fields of time when required to do so. No harm done.

There is nothing to fear in this timeless present. There is an absolute absence of imperfection. All is perfect-whole-being. I enjoy it so much, that I shall leave you now to visit there. For the string of words, linear, structured, measures out my being in a way that I do not so much care for in this Now.

Love is All You Need

The Beatles sang it, "Love is all you need." We've all grown up with at least some version of this truth resonating in us. I'd like to explore it a little bit here.

All my life, I have explored words and concepts, tried to realize them, understand them, live them. One of the words that I explored was 'fear.' Part of that exploration delved into the relationship between fear and need. If you believe that you need something, you will experience fear if you also believe that you may experience a lack of that thing that you need. Need engenders fear. If you need nothing, you have nothing to fear; no lack of any kind can affect you beyond the obvious fact that you will not have that thing which you lack.

If you do not fear death, either for yourself or for those whom you love, you essentially have no need. You may prefer to be alive here on this Earth, you may choose it, but you don't need it. You are an eternal being of light and love, a soul-stream emanation from the very heart of ALL That Is.

But there's more. If you need, you cannot truly love. For need engenders fear and where there is fear, love is absent. I have felt deeply into this, at great personal cost, and from my perspective I can assure you that this is unalterably true. So, I'll say it again: where you have need, you are fearful of lack, and where you are in fear, you cannot be in love. Fear is the absence of acceptance, the absense of compassion, the absence of trust, the absence of love. Love is wherever fear is not. Remove fear with acceptance, with compassion, with trust and with love. Remove fear and you will experience total love, complete and whole unto itself, unconditional, eternal, so imbued with perfect peace that it is indistinguishable from that peace.

This is why the work of uncovering and coming to the complete resolution of all of your needs, fears, secret shame and guilt is so very important. Every time that we clear our energy of yet another of these, which are not love, every time that we clear ourselves of another need for resolution and release, we create a space within us for yet more love to flow from the Source of ALL into us and thus out into the three dimensional world which is our current work-in-progress.

Truly, as it is within, so it is without. And if you would see peace, wellness and cooperation in the world which you love so much, then create it within yourself and rejoice. As you do this work within, the world around you will mirror the results of your efforts.

Remove all needs - the need for approval, for recognition, for remuneration, for love from outside of yourself, for signs of security and success, for affirmation, for validation, for all physical comforts. Let these needs slide away into total trust that you are integral to the Whole and will know only that integration and wholeness in your physicality.

Love is ALL.

You need nothing, lack for nothing, are pure energy in a play of pure energy, embedded so deeply, still, in an illusion of lack and loss that you have forgotten your everywhere Self.

Your everywhere Self is ALL love.
  

Seen From Here

A haiku that I wrote in 1998:

Seen from here, the great

Stillness of the world... I lack

Nothing now. And yet...

I remember the year that I wrote it because it was the year of the great ice storm in southern Quebec. I went out with my camera and shot images that entranced me, of the great stillness after the storm.

We move through other storms now; we do so more or less whole, complete, fulfilled.

Yesterday, I wrote of that completeness within and needing nothing outside of it. It is a different way of being in the world. Today, I write of why we might wish to place ourselves in this new way of being.

I believe that we are here on this Earth, with always the ... "And yet...." driving us forward, because we have chosen to be of service to the ALL by being the consciousness of separation from it. Ceaselessly, over millenia and countless incarnations, we have done this. We have been the awareness of World, which is God, as a separate Other, observing, defining, describing, enraptured by, horrified by, loving, hating, fearing and manipulating. We have been in service as the separate Other, when really, we were God, the ALL, immersed in an all-encompassing illusion of separated Self as service to the Whole.

Now, it is time for us to end the illusion, for our work in this vast sphere of separation is done. Now, we bring our awareness of the ALL, newly awakened in us, to the illusion, thus completing the vast work that we have undertaken over so many lifetimes.

And so we find that we are able to love ourselves as God loves us. We find that we are complete, whole and perfect-whole-being. We realize that we are awake to every nuance of ALL that is. More and more we are this.

And we make the choice to serve still, to bring the myriad, almost infinite parts and pieces of ourselves and our world into the divinity that is the heart of all things. We do this through acceptance. We do this through love. We do this through resonance. We do this through our quiet removal of duality from our consciousness.

That place of perfect peace within us is the communion with ALL from which we first entered this illusion. It never actually left us, for it is what we truly ARE and could not, would not, fully separate itself from us. It is the heart of the ALL that is and it is within us.

Now, in this time of awakening and enjoining, we are called upon to witness the illusion knowing that we are the consciousness of the ALL observing the ALL. We do this in service. We do this through our choosing to do it. It is not penance or punishment. It is service and it is honoured as such. Feel into it and you will know.

The challenge is to let go of our sense that we are separate. We have had that sense of separation for a very long time and although it has been very difficult for us to endure, it is something that we know and know well. Now, we release this separation from the ALL, from God. Now we breathe deeply and find that peace, that eternal love, within us. We come to know ourselves as God also, not separate from, but integral to, and in fact, returned to our sacred center from a great journey of discovery and display.

This brings me back to my little haiku. Seen from here is the World in all of its entirety and grandeur. I lack nothing, and there is this great peace, this great stillness within me.... and yet, I seem to need to need, to want to want, to seek even when ALL is within me.

The love that we are, the perfection that we are, when we remove our own barriers to it, when we enter into complete trust of it and joy in it, frees us from the perpetual quest for all that is other than this pure communion with the heart of ALL.

And living from this center, nothing disturbs our peace. Seen from here, the stillness contains all movement, all becoming. Seen from here, with the eyes of God, the circle is complete; we are complete; we have completed our journey and can rest. 

In a World of Form and Feeling

We live from the inside out. All that we are and that we experience comes from within us and we always have all that we need.

Yet we are in the unfortunate habit of looking outside of ourselves for sustenance and sublime wisdom.

The insight was given to us in The Course in Miracles and it has been given to us a number of times since then. I find it in a message from God, channeled by Yael and Doug Powell quite recently. It is a very simple insight. The instant that you look outside of yourself for whatever it is that you think you want or need or should have, in that moment, in that instant, you create the separation between yourself and ALL-That-Is. As God also, you always have all that you need; as struggling little human being in a world of form and feeling, you almost never do. 

The immediate impact of forgetting Who you really Are is this separation and the perception of need that seems to inevitably accompany it. In looking outside of yourself, you metaphorically step outside of the perfect peace and total love that is there within you and always will be, as surely as dawn follows midnight and midnight follows noon.

So, this is very simple and yet it changes everything. And times being what they are, we are more able now than ever before in all of the great ages of Earth, to access this completeness within, this wholeness that knows no lack of any kind. And within that place of perfect peace and effortless being we shine love and light to share with each other what it means to be mind of God, heart of God in a world of form and feeling.

Colours

This morning, I look out from my window and see a delicate blue-grey colouring the sky to the north-west. I have been exploring removing myself from the yes / no polarities that surround me and colours help me to do this.

It began as I contemplated my belly in the bedroom mirror. I could lose a few pounds quite happily. Well... more than a few. Yet I don't choose to dwell on being fat as opposed to being thin. I could gain a few thousand dollars in my bank account - now that it is time to start planning the extensive landscaping needed here, where last summer there was mud surrounding a brand new construction. I don't choose to dwell on having as opposed to not having. I am exploring what it feels like to remove myself entirely from these dichotomous concerns. Colours help.

This is not unprecedented for me. There was a time, some decades ago, when I explored removing myself from what I then saw as the tyranny of words, the limitation of my experience of things through the myriad definitions that make up our sense of the world. Words like tree, ground, sky, dog... mother, rock, car....

We first, as young children, experience the world without definitions to mediate between our direct knowing and our mind's interpretations. Later, we learn more and more words, acquire more and more definitions. These definitions come to stand between self and world, so that tree is known as much through the word and our previous experiences of tree as it is through our direct experience of it in the Now. That seemed to me to be a terrible thing. I resolved to experience sometimes without words, to intentionally refrain from defining, describing, limiting the experience by assigning words to it. This latest exploration has a similar feel to it. I am removing myself from the whole structure of this as opposed to that.

What if I am this Lu in the moment rather than being this overweight Lu or this not overweight Lu? Can I simply refrain from defining myself as rich or poor, having or not having, lucky or unlucky? And like the earlier exploration of living in a world without words to mediate my experience, this feels like a quiet place, a very simple place.

The thing that I like about colours is that they have no opposition in the world. Oh, I know that we speak of complementary colours and opposite colours - blue and yellow for example. I don't see the duality inherent there. It is no mere accident that we speak of the colour wheel. The circle of colours corresponds for me with the 360 degrees of selfhood, the totality of my experiences summed and held inclusively, each enriching the other.

It is my intention to move completely outside of duality, to BE in a new place, where lack and abundance, for example, do not signify. Both are dissolved in the totality of my acceptance of, and appreciation for, the moment in which I find myself. The colours that surround me in the moment, complete within themselves, as I am, as every thing is, remind me to fully enter into my immediate experience of the Now, complete, whole, perfect.
 

Look Within

You might not believe that you have the power to transform the world, but I assure you that you do. And I'm not playing a game of semantics here, meaning that you will transform the 'world' that you see and that alone. No, your contribution transforms the whole of it - subtly, lovingly, with God's own grace.

The key thing here is your love for ALL. This is the transformative energy with which you came to this Earth and this is the transformative energy which is yours to use now as you will. As you love, you add to the world's great store of love. As you love unconditionally, the way that God loves, you transform the world at the level of the space between molecules, the zero point field, the field of potentials that affects all that IS.

This is not of the mind. This is not of action or reaction, response or relief. This is not work, an effort of will. This is bringing your Self to the level of pure peace and then radiating that outward.

You'll find it within you. You will not find it outside of you.

Look within and move into that place of unconditional love for what is. When you go beyond all words, you'll know that you have found it. Breathe there for a few minutes and then just go about your day. That is all. That is all that you need do. That place within you, which is divine love, will expand slowly, the way roses unfold, and will stabilize within you as you breathe into it. From there, you will transform the world, not with any agenda or set of imperatives, but with allowance and enabling and expansion of possibilities.

You'll know it when you touch upon it. From that wordless whole-self-being, from that love that is divine, you have the power to transform the world.

The World is in Crisis; What Shall We Do?

Even though the world is in crisis, the world is in turmoil, the world is filled with apparently needless suffering, this is not 'bad.'

"There are no victims, only experience." Master Kuthumi informs us and we would do very well at this time to heed these words.

Why? Why should we not be filled with consternation and concern?

Because they do not serve. Now more than ever, we experience what we are. This is true globally; all of humanity is party to this. As we are within ourselves, we make the world to be. So, if you are suffering, anxious, fearful, fretful, careful and mourning, you bring this to the world and you create this in the world.

If you are trusting, calm, peaceful, accepting and honouring of others, you bring this to the world and you create this in the world. And I don't know about you, but I can actually feel the difference within me when I read the list of words beginning with the word 'suffering' and the list of words beginning with the word 'trusting.'

Compassion is an honouring of the experience of the other. It is not a wringing of hands. Compassion does not mean that you live the experience for them; it means that you trust that they can and will live the experience as their own and do so just as they should for their own highest good. Compassion profoundly honours the other. It has taken me many years to understand what compassion truly is. It is not concern. It is not sympathy, which literally means 'suffering with.' It is not pity. It is the realization that this other person is God also, perfect, whole, complete, and has created the experience through which they are living for reasons which are perfect, whole, complete.

As you are now, you are creating energy, creating potentials, creating waves of feeling that wash out from you and into the world around you. As you create peace within yourself, you create more and more, the potential for peace in the world and you affect the potentials for Earth changes also. We humans are much more closely linked, at the energetic level, to planet Earth than we might have previously supposed. We matter. What we do matters. Why we do it matters. What we think and feel matters. Not just for us, but for all who live upon this planet.

So, yes, it's scary. Yes, it's intense. Breathe and breathe and find that place within you which is God and from that place you will manifest peace on Earth - not just peace among nations, but peace among tectonic plates. This is truly a provision of service at this time.

Hold that space of peace and compassion within you that allows planet Earth and the humanity which lives and breathes upon the Earth to move forward into this time of unpredented transformation with grace, with courage, and with wisdom. This is what serves.

Breathe and know that all is well in all of creation, that despite all appearances to the contrary we are actually doing very well and have the potential to do even better, especially as we practice trusting and honouring all experiences as being exactly what they should be. God knows that they are.

Love and Light

It is a measure of the times in which we live that I have often received email messages from friends who sign off blessing me with love and light. I have done the same. I have also thought long and hard about what these words mean for us at this time. For there is a strain of new age thinking, albeit somewhat dated now, that subscribes to the idea that we should fill ourselves with love as a way of banishing hatred and fear, and turn our eyes to the light as a way of holding all darkness at bay, metaphorically speaking, of course.

I embrace the love and the light, but I do so on these terms; the love shall be a love of all that is, including every dung heap, every fear-filled heart, every baby's cry; the light shall shine so brightly that the truth of all things shall be revealed to us.

The love which we invoke invites us to love all that we are without reservation, condition, denial or distraction. This love is the love of God, which is all-inclusive, unconditional, always total. It is beyond any love we have known until now.

The light which we invoke allows us to see what has been hidden. It is the light that illuminates the world at a time when the veils of forgetting are lifted. It is the light that enlightens us as we realize the truth about what we are and why. It shines consistently and courageously and it allows us to go beyond the sense of ourselves that we have held for so long, that sense that we are somehow less than divine, less than holy, somehow separated from Source.

It served us, you know, to be so belittled. There are some who decry our humanity, our needs, wants and fears. I have this to say in response: It is only through our humanity that we experience our divinity in this entirely and miraculously new way, this joyfully transformative way. It is not a negation of our humanity that we say that we are One with Source; it is an affirmation of it; it is a testament to all that we are and all that we are not.

Do not love only the light and the clean and the beautiful. Do not suppose that the light shines only on that which you love. Do not deny your humanity to embrace your divinity; it does not serve you or the divine to attempt to do this. We are flesh, blood and bone. We cry, we belly-laugh and we eat french fries. And we are God also. This is the miracle.

We've always known that somewhere out there was Source, was a Love so complete that we could not comprehend it. Spread the good news! In here is Source. We now embody and radiate that Love.

We are Source for this love and this light. Simultaneously we are experiencing this love and this light. More even than these - we are Source for all that is NOT this love and this light. Now that is something to be patting ourselves on the back about.

See here. We have done this. We have become ALL-That-Is, consciously, individually. We have incorporated a paradox, being both everything and only this, being both God and obviously NOT God. That is the accomplishment. That is the miracle.

If we were other than human, more than, bigger than, less prone to self-delusion than... it wouldn't be quite the same resonant accomplishment now would it? Like the artist who paints with her toes, we have taken on a seemingly overwhelming task and succeeded where some thought that we could not.

Take a deep breath and invoke the love and the light of Source, that these might flow from you, through you and out into the perfectly imperfect world that we have made.
   

The Gathering

I respectfully request that you will honour me in my writing this morning by reading this piece aloud. Thank you.

The Gathering

Like strands of yarn or bits of fabric,

we gather now all the various bits and pieces of ourselves into a bundle of being.

We bundle them up, gather them together, hold them within our clumsy embrace.

Clumsy because we are new at this.

Clumsy because our hands are now so full, our sense of ourselves is so volatile,

changing from one day to the next.

Clumsy because our gathering up continues even when we think

that perhaps we have got it all gathered in,

so busy holding all of these bits and pieces and strands interwoven while

at the same time

we continue to come upon more bits, more strands,

and gather them in as well.

And all of this is done in love, so that we become thick with it,

our eyes moist and our hearts open.

This is done in a quiet imperative of pressures unseen, undefined,

but none the less real for us.

We do not slow ourselves in this work of gathering at this time.

If anything, we increase our pace, become ever more aware

of even the smallest strands and pieces which have not yet been touched,

gathered in, embraced, included

in the wholeness of our bundled selfhood. 

Why? Why do we do this? Why now?

Like peripatetic families, we learn to carry all that we have and all that we are more easily with us,

for we are preparing ourselves for a journey. 

We will travel swiftly and travel far and we know somehow that the time is upon us, the time is now,

and we must prepare for the journeying, prepare for the swiftness and the distance and

the unknowns of our becoming.

So we gather all of our parts and pieces, all of our strands and strains of selfhood,

all of our love and all of that which is not yet love which still we have within us

and we bundle it all into a more or less unified selfhood, a more or less streamlined package,

so that we can go the distance at a pace that will find us where we should be

at the dawning of a new age.

Radiance

All the world's a mirror. And it perfectly reflects what we are in the moment. As we come more and more into the realization of this, we begin to enjoy the reflective qualities of the world. We are answered. Always. We are answered.

We do not need to seek or see validation of our being and our creations in the people around us; all the world is our answer and we ourselves are our validation.

As we radiate the truth of our being out into the world, the world responds in kind and our experience is our validation. The solid ground of our being in the world is our own feeling, our own experience.

More, our radiance is our service to the world. We do not need to create with others in mind. We can create from the heart of ourselves and the creation will radiate from us into the world and be a blessing to others. In this way, we become self-centered, self-referent, whole-self-being in the world. That is our true service.

We were not born into this world to mimic others, but to be ourselves. We were not born into this unprecedented time to hide our radiance behind self-doubt. For as we radiate our being into the world, we are answered by the world. We create from the truth of ourselves and the creation is imperative, immeasurable, immediate.

And perfect.

It is the perfect response to the totality of the Now and it shines its wholeness both backward and forward through time. 

All the world's a mirror and it shines so brightly at this time! It reflects our own radiance back to us and inspires further discovery of who we really are.

Let's Pretend

When I was a little girl, my brother John and I would play make-believe. We would create scenarios and then play them out, pretending that it was so. Sometimes we were adventurers. Sometimes we were adults, doing the things that adults do as we understood them at the time, which is to say, looking important and saying incomprehensible things. Usually we would end up giggling and laughing at our own ignorance more than anything. My favourite make-believe was when we turned the upstairs hallway into a sea and old shoe boxes into boats. I loved to create a miniature world and look down upon it.

Let's pretend that we can create a new world to replace the old world that we have lived in for so long. Let's make-believe that we are visionaries and that our visions of what can be actually do make the world in that way. That's what the people of Egypt did. They made themselves believe that they actually could effect a real change in a world grown terribly stagnant and out of touch with the will of the people.

Let's pretend that as we feel ourselves to be, so the world becomes. So, for example, if I am loving and trustworthy and feel that within me, so the world becomes loving and trustworthy.

Let's do that.

I'll share a secret with you. It works. The world actually does become what you are. If you are honest in all your dealings, you'll live in a world where people are honest in all their dealings. I've been doing it for years.

I used to live in a 'bad' neighbourhood in Montreal. I never locked my door. I just don't like fumbling with keys while my hands are full of packages and a purse and my mittens. My friend, and neighbour, was appalled at my not locking my door. I made the mistake of informing her, with some pride, that I didn't lock my door. She appealed to me repeatedly to begin locking my door. So I agreed to do so, and being a person who honours her word, I actually did lock my door. With all that talk of thieving and being robbed and the danger of unauthorized entry into my home, a woman alone... (What was I thinking!) a certain focus on such an occurrence resulted. Two days after I began locking my door, I came home, unlocked the door, walked into my house and discovered a thief who had broken down the back door, also locked at the time, and was trying to find something worth stealing (I live very simply). He ran away and I called the police and had to live with a broken back door for 3 days as I couldn't get anyone to come fix it until the next Monday. After that, I stopped locking my door and have never since locked it and have never since had any unauthorized entry into my home. I don't lock my car doors either. I just make-believe that I live in a world where people have no reason to steal from each other.

So, let's pretend that peace in Libya is possible, probable, imminent.

Let's pretend that a new day is dawning on our beloved planet and that we can create a world where people have no fear of each other, where people honour each other, care for each other.

Let's pretend that the internet is an incredibly powerful and beneficial force for change in the human experience of what it means to be on this planet. Let's pretend that we are becoming one people, a unified community of souled-beings practicing unconditional love and total acceptance. I see this all around me. Everywhere I look, I see this, or signs of this, because it is my vision and I am making-believe.

Let's pretend that when we make-believe, we make the world anew.

I like to play that game. I like it very much.
 

Where Are You?

There is a need for grounding these days. And your groundedness will come from that place where you are most deeply yourself. Where is that place?

For me, it is the forest. It is the hillside, the strong straight tree trunks, the uneven ground and sudden small pools of rain water. Going into the forest is, for me, like drinking water when I am thirsty. It is necessary.

Where is this place for you?

And when you know where it is and you intentionally situate yourself there, grounding is so assured that it is almost immediate. And there is a palpable sense of relief, a visceral sense of well-being. I AM in this place.

It is a simple matter to be in the Now in this place, for there is nowhere else that I would rather be.

It is a foregone conclusion that I will know my truth in this place, not loudly, or with any resistance, but rather quietly and surely. There may be words, but they will not be needed. My every breath in this place shall express my truth.

Where is this place? Can you position yourself within it? Can you, will you, gift yourself with your own grounded being on this Earth at this time? Having done so, your calm and peaceful energy will radiate from you and gift all of us. There is no separation between us in the realm of thought, in the force of feeling. When you ground and center and bring peace to your own whole-self-being, you offer me grounding, a centeredness and peace as a potential.

The distance now between heaven and hell has never been so small. It is the split-second choice. It is the breath and the balance. For we are coming out from under the illusion that had us believing that we are not the creators of our world - always, in every instance, in every moment.

Where are you when you are at home? At home in the Wholeness of it such that there is no lack within you, no lack nor loss of any kind. Can you radiate that completion? Can you breathe and exhale that Wholeness?

I would spend long hours there, breathing in and breathing out. I would share that miracle with all the world - that transformation is as close as your own heart's choosing, that peace on Earth is as near as the breath and the balance.

That is where I am now. That is my truth today.

Where are you? What is your truth?

Rise Up!

If you are reading this, you are working actively on your own enlightenment and raising your vibration to a level of pure love, unconditional love, God consciousness.

I spoke with a friend on Sunday about the suffering in Japan after the high magnitude earthquake and tsunami there, and about the suffering of those fighting oppression and tyranny in Libya. I could feel the energy of these areas as we spoke. Yes, there is great suffering there, but there are a lot of other energies as well - energies of change, of transformation, of revolution, of renewal.

Those of us who are consciously bringing in the light of God's love to this Earth are doing a tremendous service to all of humanity, to our beloved planet, and to each other. We are raising the vibration not just within ourselves, but as a potential to all others. We are living the truth that it is below as it is above, and it is on the macrosmic scale as it is on the microcosmic scale. If you would see peace, be peaceful. What you are matters, as we are all holographic in nature.

So, although the tendency is toward a certain amount of hand-wringing and sympathetic feeling for those around us who are suffering, we can best help them and affect potentials for further events as well, by holding the light, holding the love, holding the consciousness that is divine, that is a higher frequency vibration.

Rise up! How can they possibly continue to bring themselves up unless they have a feel for it within them? And where will that feeling come from if not from their human brethren on the other side of the world?

Send them light. Send them love. Send them peace. Send them strength and courage. To send these, you must BE these.

Hold yourself in that higher frequency vibration, for the time is now that we shall see these very dramatic events continue to unfold around us. Breathe and BE the energy that you would like to see in the world. For it is we who create the new even as the old crumbles around us.

BE the light.

BE the love.

BE the higher vibration that is God's heart and consciousness in the world of form.

Rise up!

There is a Place

There is a place within each footstep, within each glance,
There is a place where everything is exactly as it should be.

Never mind the rain or wind, the grey skies wearing winter colours still
When you might yearn for something softer.

Even mud or a broken grocery bag, the contents spilling,
Even when your brother said goodbye and you were there and he,
But then that was the last, last time. Even then.

Never mind. There is a place where everything is endless, whole, giving
All that should be given and nothing more, and nothing less.

The reflection in rain drop on twig contains the most that the world ever could contain.

And it is all that there is and it is always the perfect amount - indwelling.

And did you know that there is actually no time?
A day, a week, a year or two - passed by as if they hadn't existed. Didn't exist.

There is a place, which is everywhere really, and in that place
There are no mistakes, no choice is less than - greater than.
You could look and listen and feel for days and days on end and you wouldn't find
A thing that wasn't perfect.

You wouldn't find a thing.

Turbulence Below, Calm Aloft

On the weather network, forecasters sometimes refer to conditions 'aloft.' I take a strange delight in that word; for me it conjures up images of tall-masted ships and eagles soaring over mountain peaks.

This morning, after stormy weather that brought a roaring sound into the trees and made sleep difficult, I rose to see dark and heavy skies with some hints of brightness in the dawn. As coffee was brewing, clear skies showed beyond the roiling clouds above the forest. A dawn walk called to me and as I climbed the hill I could clearly see the tranquil sky, traced with quiet fair weather clouds of pure white, above the scudding dark grey storm clouds closer to my mountain home.

There is turbulence below, where we find ourselves on treacherous hillsides. Yet calm and clear skies shine aloft, seemingly promising the peace that we have sought. News travels over the internet - our collective knowing, collective consciousness - of another massive earthquake and a tsunami warning - more turbulence, more challenges for our beloved family, our human brethren to face.

What shall we do then? Look up, metaphorically. Bring your focus to your own calm aloft, that higher dimensional alignment with the peace that passes all understanding. Do this not to escape the turbulence of the times, of Earth and of three dimensional being, but to unite it all in some yet unfathomed enjoining.

Be the change that we have sought. Become the very thing that we have all been waiting for, hoping for, praying for. In that acceptance of what is, no matter what it is, lead human consciousness into a new day.

We do not travel into the heart of this mystery through resistance, struggle, effort, fear or mourning.

There is nothing to resist - God is all there is.

There is no purpose in struggling - we become more and more of what we are, so any struggle brings us more struggle.

There is no need for effort - trust is the sure way forward.

There is no reason for fear - all is well in all of creation and collectively we are on the journey of a billion billion lifetimes.

There is no cause for mourning - for there is no death, nor ending - not for you, not for me, not for any other person on this planet.

It is all God - as far as the eye can see, and further, further.

Turbulence below as the tattered remnants of our stories about ourselves storm and lash out and take their leave of us. Turbulence below as our beloved Earth births herself into a new emanation of Source, a new Wholeness, a new Perfection of Being.

Calm aloft as we raise our consciousness to new levels of divine knowing, new frequencies of acceptance of what is and trust in what will be. Calm aloft as we rebirth ourselves into new alignments, each unique and exquisitely complex, of individuated expression of the ALL, which is God.

These are the times for which we have chosen to be here on this Earth. These are the times which we have prepared ourselves for over years and years. And we are ready. We are ready for this. It is time now for this. Breathe and know that you are in the perfect place and the perfect time to align, within your own awesome human self, this turbulence below and the calm aloft. 

The Whole Picture

I felt awash in new energy yesterday. Some say that we are now entering into a time of absolutely unprecedented change on Planet Earth. Phew! Well, I felt it yesterday.

Seems like we need to give ourselves plenty of space these days, plenty of room, plenty of time to BE. And it's not that we all need to quit our jobs and just lie in bed all day. I've been practicing taking that extra moment - a split second - slowing my response, slowing my fingers on the keyboard, my arm as it reaches out to answer the impatient summons of the telephone. The space we need might be no more than the stretch of legs as we walk, the reach - slower than usual, just a little bit slower than usual - up to the coffee cup on the cupboard shelf.

It seems illogical that the answer could be so simple, yet just by slowing my own body, I find that I have more time to flow through these unprecedented energies. That, and of course, the breathing, slow in and out in conscious grounding of self in the body, self in the world. That one slow, long breath takes me right where I choose to go these days.

It occurred to me last evening as the wind roared once again around my house and I felt the turbulence of the times, that it is not just I and those whom I know who are flooded by this new energy, this light that shines from the center of the cosmos upon our seemingly fragile selves. It is not just us. It is all of this planet that is so bathed at this time. It is every chipmunk and chickadee, every woodland deer and backyard dog and every sapling, every birch, bending under the force of the wind's onslaught. Wind of change. Change of unprecedented proportions. It is every human being on this planet that takes in this transforming light, whether consciously or not. It is the Earth herself, our grand and gorgeous groundedness in physicality through time and space, that moves herself oh-so-gracefully into the stream of it. Like a Goddess. I see Her that way sometimes.

The whole of us - all of Earth and all that is of Earth - the whole of us together are experiencing this, each in our own way and each a precious and integral part of the whole.

So, take a moment here and there, to see the whole picture, to imagine this planet, grand and graceful like a Goddess, bearing us in state through this portal into a new way of being, so new that no one anywhere has ever imagined it. Imagine all of us in wonder and worry and wisdom, depending upon our preference in the moment, in our place upon Her as she wheels slowly but surely into a future that cannot be predicted and cannot be forsworn.

And when it seems a bit too intense, remember that we chose to be here, now, specifically now, at this time, to help and to witness and to experience this immense becoming that is so filled with love that when you feel into it, it's all love, only love.

Don't forget to breathe.

Not Knowing

Feeling. Not knowing. Feeling is the way forward.

When we try to figure it out, try to put words to it in endless permutations of this/that and that/this, we cover it, obfuscate it, obliterate it.

What is this thing that we feel, but should not try to know with our minds? What is this .... something that we cannot fully perceive and do not understand, but which permeates our being now?

It is change. It is becoming. It is the World-Whole and we along with it - Whole Being Self. It is Divine Being in the World.

Let it be.

Let your sense of self expand into this not knowing. It is liberating. Not having to know means that we can expand into it without words. Words would limit it to the point that it would cease to be what it flowingly is anyway.

One morning, back in Pennsylvania, I walked at dawn up a steep hillside road and as I walked by a hay meadow, saw a deer back on its far side, large and alive in the dawn. She had already heard me and stood attentively, those huge ears focused on me. I stood absolutely still for long seconds, held by my wanting to behold her, and the young one behind her, a split-second late in staying its small young body into immobility. I too was utterly stopped and still, wordless, in that instant, just to experience the doe and her fawn in the silvery dawn light. And in that timeless time there was nothing else -  no thought, no movement, no before and no afterward.

And that is what I am talking about here. No words. No movement to or from. No thing at all besides this Whole-World Becoming that we are not in any way separate from. In a very real sense, there is only this. And when we speak of God, it is this of which we speak. When I write of the ALL, it is this of which I write.

I AM not knowing. I breathe and I AM.

I feel. I love. I sing long notes in the morning.

Not knowing.

The Calm After the Storm

For three days, a storm raged here in southern Quebec. It began with strong winds and fitful rain spatters. The wind sounded in the pines and the rain began to come down more steadily. I walked in the rain on the first day of the storm. On the second day the rain poured down and the winds continued to bend the upper branches of the trees and to whip around the corners of the houses. By midday, the rain had turned to snow and the snow fell so heavily that we couldn't see more than twenty feet (seven metres) in any direction. The storm raged all that evening and through the night. On the third day the wind was even stronger and the snow continued to crowd us in constant streams of white swirling turbulence. Twice I dug my way out the front door so that I wouldn't be trapped inside when it was all over. I knew that it would eventually be over. I knew that eventually the calm would return.

This morning, the calm is complete. Not a whisper of wind touches the vast drifts of snow. Not a sound disturbs the silence of the sunrise outside as I dig my way out of the house for the third time. The clear sky frames a view of peach and purple sunrise lighting the snow covering the hills and mountains across the valley to the west. I dig and dig and dig, freeing the car and the front steps and the doors in and out. The storm is passed.

And so it is in our own hearts and minds, emotional energies and bodies. We go through storms of hurt, fear and anger. We fight our way out of the entrapment of these storms - they could hold us back, keep us locked in under their weight. We know so well the feeling of held in, held back. Sometimes it seems safer just to stay inside, under the swirling blinding mess of emotions, old beliefs, old hurts and fears, old limits on how we can be in the world.

If we would be free, we must dig and dig and dig. Every time some stormy detritus blocks our way into calm, into freedom, into peace, we must dig and dig and dig some more. The path is narrow and rocky and fearful at times, for we are being asked, as we travel this way, to free ourselves of every limiting belief, every fear and every old resentment and hurt that we have ever known. And to do that we have to be willing and able to face them - every one. That takes courage. It takes bravery. It takes determination and commitment as well.

Last evening, as the remnants of the storm outside blew themselves out and away, I faced the storm within me once again. Old fears surfaced and I knew that I must face them or be limited by them, stopped, stopped from going forward. I can't abide that - not now, not having come so far.

So, with as much strength, wisdom and grace as I could muster, I faced my fear once again. "What is it that you have to tell me?" I asked. "I'll sit with you until we're clear, you and I." I said this as I shook under the strength of the fear, for it was an old fear and a terrible one. I said this as I sat alone in the night, for this is work that is best done alone. And I meant what I said. You have to mean it. You have to be willing to sit with it and just be with it until clarity is achieved and the calm is felt within you. Hard won.

Yes, perhaps it is hard won, but it is the only way through and into freedom from the fear that limits, that drags and pulls like the fierce winds pulled at me as I dug my way out yesterday.

We have a choice. We can pretend that we are whole and free and clear, endlessly distracting ourselves with all kinds of things whenever the stormy truth shows ourselves to ourselves, or we can do the work of facing our own feelings and the truth about ourselves until we truly are whole and free and clear.     

And having done this, having had the courage, we can then enjoy, completely and fully enjoy, the calm after the storm.

Peace

Today a vast storm rages. Snow swirls around the sides of my house like waves curling 'round the prow of a great ship on the high seas. Wind moans and drives the snow into crisp drifts that block my door. All the world is wind-whipped and turbulent around me.

Inside, peace lives in the stream of notes as I listen to a piece composed by J. S. Bach and played on solo piano by Murray Perahia, who, (dare a Canadian say it?) rivals Glenn Gould in his brilliance, dedication and virtuosity.

As I listen, entranced, I write of peace amidst the swirling energies of the storm.

Let us not think, but rather feel. When we feel ourselves, we come into peace as surely as water flows downhill. Again, I find myself urging you to go within in complete acceptance of whatever it is you will experience there to find the groundedness, the solid foundation of your being. In acceptance of what you truly ARE, you will find a peace that answers every question. You will find it as you FEEL yourself to BE. Breathe deeply and slowly and there you will find it.

When you feel and accept the feeling, whatever it is, you will know peace. That peace will be a calm in any storm, for borne as it is of your own love of self, acceptance of self, it cannot be swayed, stolen, or driven away by anything outside of you. And when you have such a peace inside of you, you become sovereign, beholden to no one, needful of no outside source for your indwelling sense of your own worth, your own value, your own being in the world.

And in that space, that clear, clean space, there is no need at all for the struggle of forcing anything, of fighting, defending, battling or belittling. In your perfect peace, you will see the innate perfection of ALL that you encounter. It is not ego-driven; it does not seek to place itself above anyone or anything. It has the solidity of bedrock. It is the stand of a sovereign being, embodying the ALL holographically and in complete acceptance of ALL.

Let us breathe ourselves into being and only being. Let us breathe ourselves consciously into peaceful being, quiet being. Let us accept the sunlight and the storm, the stream of being and becoming, the yes, the no and the dancing rippling dip of time that separates them.

If you doubt your ability to reach that peace, accept the doubt until you become nothing but acceptance. There, you will find all that you have sought.

Appearances Can be Deceiving

One day in yoga class I was doing the downward dog position and I noted to the teacher that I could touch my heels to the mat, and another participant chimed in, saying that she could also touch her heels to the mat. I expected the teacher to encourage us by saying, "Well done," or something similar. Instead she discouraged us by saying that the position was more about the alignment of shoulders and arms. She seemed to be allowing her ego to get in the way of her responsibilities as a teacher. And it was in that moment that I suddenly had a clear vision of who this woman really was, as a person. And I didn't like what I was seeing.

She wasn't just my yoga teacher; she was also my friend. So after this incident, I continued to think about it and mull it over.

Many months later, living in a different place, a different country, doing yoga in my own quiet room in my quiet house in the still, yet vast and living forest, I was in the downward dog position and I remembered the incident with the yoga teacher and how I had known then who she was. And suddenly I realized that I hadn't known at all who she was. I had known the energy that she was expressing. I had known the energy vibration that she was filled with and was sending out to me. That's all. It was an energy vibration. It was a choice in the moment to express that energy vibration rather than some other energy vibration.

And that is what we are doing all the time - radiating energy - this instead of that, or that instead of this. That is what she was doing in that moment. And I didn't like her energy output at all. I didn't like the choice that she made, the vibration that was emanating from her. At all. But that says nothing about Her. She is God also. She is pure love. As am I. As are we all.

Her energy in the moment might be any one of a vast variety of things - need, fear, uncertainty, ego concerns, anxiety, selfishness, selflessness, peace, joy, superiority, domination, submission.... all kinds of things come across through our energy vibrations. But that is not who we are.

And when we quiet and become intentional in our radiance of energy, we get to choose consciously what energy we will send out. And if we choose to do so, we can send out the energy of our vast, illimitable, ineffable beingness, without distortion, without any ripples on the surface of that infinite pool of beingness.

Or we can breathe, breathe deeply, clear our consciousness and see the true beingness of those who stand before us, oh-so-human in their energy outputs, but so much more than what they happen to be expressing in that moment.

So much more.

Appearances can be deceiving.

You are a Great Gift to the World

Oh, you might not believe it, but it is true. You are a great gift to the world simply be being what you are being, radiating the energy that you are radiating, thinking the thoughts that you are thinking. We make the world, all of us together. We are co-creators and more and more now, we become conscious co-creators.

You hold an incredible energy for the world; it is your own energy. You shine all the time. And if it makes you feel good to read this, that is because you are willing and enthusiastic about being of service in the world around you. You might not volunteer at a homeless shelter or serve on a committee in your community, but that does not mean that you are not of service. You are of profound service, just by your being.

And more and more, you give consciously and you give from your heart.

And All-That-Is rejoices.

As we awaken to our joy at being human and our love for this world and for all of humanity, we choose more and more consciously to be of service to others, of service to the ALL. As we come to realize, sometimes with a great deal of surprise, that we actually want to be here, that it is not a penance, not a trial, not a tribulation or a struggle, the gift of our radiance becomes lighter and lighter.

And it doesn't mean that you have to be happy all the time, or expressing love in every instant. There are times when each of us is challenged and when we fall out of love and into anger or resentment or any of these vibrations which we now feel, more and more, disinclined to hold for very long. It is not that they are wrong; they are uncomfortable; they are not what we tend to be choosing for ourselves.

And we need less and less appreciation from others for our presence (pardon the pun), and less and less validation from outside of ourselves for the exquisite, unique and subtly perfect vibration which emanates from us. We are that we are. We begin to stand in sovereignty in our beingness. It is joyful. It is a gift of incredible value which we each give to the world.

We bless each other through our gaze. We hold love and light even when we seem not to be doing so. We are the gift that we have looked for in all of those catalogues that come in the mail, all of those storefronts, all of those Hallmark cards. We are the gift to each other.

Each one of us is a gift, a great gift to the world.

Thank you!

 

A Safe Space

When we are aligned with our higher purpose, with our truth, when we are inhaling and exhaling in full integrity with ALL that we are, we are in a safe space. There is nowhere that we need to get to, nothing that we need to do to prepare for some future moment.

This alignment with our true self is our preparation for anything and everything that might befall us. It is all that we need to focus on at this time, which is the present moment. It comes easily through the breath, through conscious breathing with the intention to ground ourselves within ourselves.

It is possible to live through moments in total peace, complete unity with the totality of our being in the world, so that there is no separation between self and ALL-That-Is. As we breathe with intent and seek the truth of our being in the world with courage, we come into this alignment and we are safe.

No matter what is going on around us in the larger world of being and doing, in the political sphere, the economic sphere, the environmental sphere, the social sphere - no matter what surrounds us on any level, when we are aligned with our own self being in the world, when we are centered and in our integrity, we are exactly where we should be for our greatest good and for our greatest service to the world, to Gaia, to humanity, to the ALL-That-Is.

It is so simple. It is so very simple.

That doesn't make it easy, for all sorts of thoughts, beliefs, stories that we have told about ourselves, opinions of others, perceived needs, perceived lack, perceived dangers, doubts and worries can very quickly bring us right back into a sense of separation and the need for security that always follows from that sense of separation.

That is when we go back, with intention, to the breath, to the stillness within, to conscious alignment with our truth - not what we think we should be, or what we would like people to perceive us as being, but what we are. And it is always within reach, this truth. And it always serves as the effortless answer, the most loving space you'll ever know, the wisest teacher, the greatest gift. I learned this well. I learned this through years of chronic depression and physical pain. No matter how horrible you might think the truth of your being is, it is perfect for you in this moment.

Our truth is always within reach and always it is the way forward.

The safe space is within you. Look for it there and be well.

Listen to Yourself

Even Though

Even though your heart might be broken

Even though you might lose control

Let your spirit sing like the birds' song

Listen to your soul.

When you find yourself out on a road that's too long

And you don't know which way you should go

There's a feeling inside you that's coming on strong

And it's telling you what you should know.

So, even though your heart might be broken

Even though you might lose control

Let your spirit sing like the birds' song

Listen to your soul.

Every time that you try to hold on to the World

There's a terrible risk that you take.

You could falter and fall and you could lose it all

If you build up and try hard to make it,

But, even though your heart might be broken

Even though you might lose control

Let your spirit sing like the birds' song

Listen to your soul.

When the people around you are telling you "No!"

And it seems to be taking too long

Just remember what started you out on this path

You are heading to where you belong.

So, even though your heart might be broken

Even though you might lose control

Let your spirit sing like the birds' song

Listen to your soul.

Listen to your soul.

Listen to your soul!

I wrote that song in the year 2000, not long after my brother died suddenly and I found myself struggling just to get through the minutes, much more so the days. We're going through something unprecedented, vast and unpredictable. And lots of people are saying lots of things. That's fine, I mean, I'm one of them. But the truth of the matter will come from within you. Always. Use your sense of resonance, of whether or not something that you read or hear fits within you as a truth. If it doesn't, let it go. It is not for you, but it might be for someone else. And use this method of discernment for all the information that comes your way, whether it was written 2000 years ago, or 2 days ago. You are wise enough within your soul-self and your body to know what is true for you. It will feel true and will uplift and empower you if it is yours.

Listen to yourself. Listen to your soul. Know your worth and your ability to discern for yourself. We are all new at this. We are all becoming conscious co-creators of our emerging world. As much as I have my truth which is very strong within me, and which I share with you here, you have yours. I honour your truth and I honour you.

From that which is divine in me, to that which is divine in you, I greet you and offer you my love and my light. I hear you as best I can. I listen to myself as much as I can. I encourage you to do the same.