You and Me

Me:  Based upon your life experience, what would you say is the most important advice you would give someone about living a meaningful life.

You:  I like how you get right to it…..but my answer depends upon how you define "meaningful".  The Human vocabulary is very limiting when it comes to where this conversation is going.

Me:  Ok, what I mean is making a positive contribution to all that is, friends, family, the Earth and all living things.

You:  Well, what about  Spirit?  Don't you want to contribute to spirit? 

Me:  Wait, wait……… isn't spirit all knowing?  How could I contribute to spirit? 

You:  let's make sure we are on the same page about what spirit is.  Define what Spirit is for you?

Me:  It's the intelligence and energy behind all that is.  It's the impulse to grow,  evolve and progress in a sustainable way.  That’s what it means to me anyway, but I guess there is no real way of actually knowing what it is.

You:  Have you ever felt it? 

Me:   Yeah, every once in a while I can feel it, sometimes in the form of a thought, sometimes in the form of a palpable feeling in my body. 

You: How do you know it's spirit?  Maybe it's just your intuition or gut.

Me:  I think my intuition is spirit.  When I am open to it, that impulse to grow, evolve and progress comes through with wisdom or creativity that I need to learn from or act from so that I am moving in the right direction.

You:  How do you know what the right direction is?  And what do you mean when you are open to it?  Do you choose when to be open to it? 

Me:  I thought I was going to be asking the questions today!!!  Anyway, for me, I can discern the right direction based on how it feels in my heart.  I have to be sure that I don't let my intellect creep in.  As for choosing to be open to it, apparently I do make a choice when to be open. 

You:  So, if spirit is all knowing, why would you not choose to be open to it more often?  Seems to me that would be the easiest way to live your life aligned with your goal of a meaningful life.

Me:  I don't know.  I am much more deliberate about being open to it now that I have ever been before though.

You:  It's not enough!!!   If you goal is to make a positive contribution to all that is, friends, family, the Earth and all living things, you should spend the vast majority of your time listening to Spirit.  And by the way that is how you contribute to Spirit as well.  You know those times when you listen to Spirit and you feel empowered and just the right wisdom or creativity required at that moment comes to you?  That is you contributing to Spirit.

Me:  Not sure I'm following you on how that contributes to Spirit.  What do you mean?

You:  Well, Spirit is all knowing, it is all the wisdom, creativity, intelligence, energy, anything  that is necessary for existence.  But knowing all of that is one thing, experiencing it in manifestation is a totally different thing, so when you tap in to Spirit, and act upon it, you experience what Spirit is as a physical manifestation.  Think about it, when you are tapped into Spirit and act upon it, what problems do you have.

Me:  Nothing, it's awesome!!  Like nothing I have ever felt!!!

You:  So why would you not spend more time in that state?

Me:  Ok, Ok, I get it, I should be more deliberate in living from Spirit, but I want to talk more about Spirit.  Everyone has access to Spirit right?

You:  Access is not a good word to use with Spirit.  It makes it sound like its something separate from you or anyone else for that matter.  Spirit is you, it's closer than your breath and nearer than your beating heart.  It's the essence of you in the physical world….You are in this world but not of it!!!

Me:  I can get grasp that, but if that’s the case, why are there so many fucked up things in the world.  If we are all spirit, why are we killing each other, many times in the name of God?  Why is there disease, poverty, strife and separation in so much of the human population?

You:  Why indeed?  You touched on it earlier.  Too many people let there intellect drive their actions.  Humans believe the most absurd things and discount the most evident truths because they rarely allow spirit to provide them direction.  But lets keep our conversation focused on you.  You need to be much more deliberate in living from Spirit.  You need to begin to remove those things that do not allow you to be tapped in to spirit from your daily activities.  This is how you will contribute the most to all that there is.  No other way.

To Be Continued

Thriving is an evolutionary impulse.

To Thrive is an urge that resides within each and every one of us, it is an evolutionary impulse.  When we allow ourselves to be embraced by the qualities of thriving, problems do not exist.  On an energetic spectrum, thriving is very close to Love.  Progress, Expansion, Prospering and Advancement are qualities that are associated with both Love and thriving.  Thriving along with Love  is not static, they are not attained, they are not a destination.  They are a processes for lack of a better description (words cannot aptly describe divinity), and they are innate to us and are experienced when we allow ourselves to.  There is no effort involved to experience Love or Thriving, only allowing.

Since leaving my Corporate gig some 4 months ago, I spent the Summer playing, riding my Motorcycle across the country and kind of decompressing from an environment that was becoming increasingly mechanistic in the achievement of the established metric of "Success".  While that last sentence may sound as though I'm critical of the environment, I am very grateful for my time with the firm and the people I worked with.  Who I am today and how I think is to a degree a result of my time and experience in the corporate world.  The concept of Thriving at anything was really stimulated and awakened for me in the last 18 months of my office Gig.

Howard Thurman (do you know who he was?  If not research him, research is part of thriving) said "Don't ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive, because what the world needs is more people to come alive" and that is more true today than ever before.  Howard said that in the context of civil rights and while I don't know his exact meaning behind it, when I read that quote it means thriving.  You can't be apathetic and thrive, you can't have a 5 minute attention span and thrive.  You can't have fear imposed upon you, accept it and thrive.

Life is made of contrasting values and qualities and for the sake of time I'm going to use the contrast of Apathy and Thriving.  An apathetic individual has an absence of interest in or concern about emotional, social, spiritual, philosophical and of physical life in the world.  A thriving individual, for me anyway, grows and develops emotionally, socially, spiritually, philosophically and physically with all the challenges that exist to not grow.  If you're not growing you are dying.  Collectively today across the Earth, what state do you think is more prevalent?  Nix that, collectively today within your community, be it an office setting, school setting, religious congregational setting, or government setting, what is the prevalent state?

"It is what it is".  One of the most seemingly innocuous phrases used today.  That is apathy and you know what is very close to apathy energetically?  Helplessness!!  And what does helplessness lead to?  Illness.  There is biology with emotions and feelings that most people let alone a large portion of the medical community has no interest in.  Don't believe me, research it.  Epigenetic is a good place to start.

I have seen Apathy make people ill, literally.  And what do most of us do when we get ill?  Go to a doctor and get treatment in the way of a pill, or poison, or surgery.  We treat the symptom and for the most part don't even consider the origin of the symptom.  This mechanistic approach to health is apathy as well.  Nobody knows your body better than you if you take the time to listen, but when you "turn over" your health to an "Authority", the doctor, you have become passive.  Don't think so, next time you hear a medication commercial on TV or radio, listen to the disclaimers and side effects of "taking" the medication.......and then consider the Billions of dollars that are made off of these medications.  Or just consider the Placebo effect.  How about the Nocebo effect?

There is an intelligence and energy within each of us that is activated when we are in a state of Thriving or Love, and we lose access to it when we are apathetic or not growing.  When you cut your finger, you don't have to try to heal, there is no effort, it just heals.  When people have a spontaneous healing, there is no effort, most people relate a palpable shift and the most common word used by them is surrender.  When we get out of our heads and the cerebral effort to make things the way that we will be "happy", we surrender to a much greater power within us, the impulse to Thrive and be the Love that created us.

Take the Training wheels off!!!

Up until 10 days ago, I worked for a major Financial Institution for the past 23 years.  I'm proud to say it had nothing to do with the Mortgage debacle or economic collapse we have been experiencing the past 6 plus years.  It was an awesome place to work with great people, I was blessed to have some really good immediate managers and when I didn't report to a good one, they were at least tolerable.  I loved the people side of my work and was able to have great interactions on a daily basis.  The last two years were my most rewarding from developing people, working with a ridiculously talented management staff and delivering top performance results.

So why leave?  Well, my life is directed by my intuition.  What I mean by my life is every aspect of my life.  I listen to my intuition on everything, as a matter of fact I cultivate it and ask my intuition for direction, and it's never wrong.  I won't get into details but over the past 60 days, things have just fallen into place so much so that it was obviously time for me to leave my job.  How did I know all of these things were setting me up for my departure?  How it felt.  I felt like I was floating six inches off the ground.  Most of the time, I had an ear to ear grin on my face.

When I told my staff that I was leaving, the first question was "where are you going?".  My reply, "Nowhere", I'm taking the summer off, do some riding, go to some races, get my muse on and then in September I'll start thinking about what I want to do next.  I literally walked away from a job I had been at for 23 years with no idea what I was going to do next for income. 

The last day of work, my son came down the stairs to go to school.  He asked, "Your done today aren't you?".  I said "Yep", he then asked me "what are you going to do next?", and I told him "Epic Shit".  His reply was "I knew that".  My oldest son, when I told him I had left the company, said "Good for you, You're such a bad ass for being true to yourself".  That's about all the confirmation I need (not that I needed it) to know my decision was dead on.

I rarely remember dreams that I might have, but fairly frequently I'll have visions that come to me almost as stories or metaphors.  One that hit me strong and was the tipping point for me in making my decision was this.  When I was learning to ride a bicycle all those years ago as a youngster, I had training wheels on my first bike.  One day my dad grabbed my bike from me, told me he would bring it right back.  My mom asked what he was doing and my dad replied "taking the training wheels off so he can see what he can really do with the bike". 

I had a similar vision of this memory, a little different but very vivid.  It was just my dad and I, I was an adult, there was no bike and my dad said to me in a very nurturing but assertive way "Take the Fucking training wheels off!!!!".   I don't remember ever hearing my dad use a curse word, so it was almost like a degree of emphasis on a clear message to me to follow my bliss.  It was one of those moments of clarity that transcends all the crap we normally associate as being life and was the nudge that made up my mind on how I would move forward.         

I've always known that I would end up doing my own thing eventually, but never really could put my finger on it.  I love coaching, and based on feedback from those I work with, I'm pretty good at it.  I love speaking to groups about talent and personal growth, and I keep getting asked to come back, so I'm at least tolerable in that arena.  I've always believed the notion that the best way to learn is to teach, and I'm doing what I teach.  Not sure how that will all manifest for me, but I trust my intuition will provide me with the clarity to move forward.

Metaphorically speaking the training wheels were my awesome, very nicely paying job that I loved.  Taking them off is the catalyst to see, as my dad said way back when, "what I can really do".  This blog will serve as record of following my bliss and what doors opened up where there were only walls. 

Pretty liberating to answer the call to adventure trusting that the Universe will conspire on my behalf and allow me to see what my potential really is!!  My highest goal is to be connected with the flow of the Universe as it expands and progresses.  Feeling very connected right now!!!

You can't be neutral on a moving train!!!!

Howard Zinn coined that phrase.  Do you know who Howard Zinn was?  He was a great scholar and  social reformer who studied social disobedience.  His interest was in change through non-violent demonstration and small change leading to eventual big change.  We are so in need of big change right now as a species.  A change in our thinking in order for our existence to be more aligned with Life and progress and expansion.

Life is pulling us and in some cases dragging us unwittingly along in this needed change of how we think.  There is an evolutionary impulse prodding us to make the necessary changes for a sustainable existence on Mother Earth.  Some of us are balancing surrender to that impulse with the confidence that by surrendering we are being deliberate in facilitating expansion and sustainable progress.  Others are resisting this impulse and resting in a naive denial of who we are at our essence.

Do you believe in Spirit?  I mean really believe in Spirit, like as in an innate knowing that you are Spirit?  Most people would answer that question affirmatively, after all something like 92% of all humans believe there is something larger than us behind our existence.  Yet collectively, we act as if  we are separate from everything and asleep at the wheel most of the time.  We have those brief moments that we feel connected to each other or Spirit, but before too very long we relapse into a mechanistic daily grind.

Why is that?  Why is it that so many people can get some degree of connection to spirit on Sunday in their house of worship, and then Monday morning relapse into behavior that is so contradictory to the sermon they were taught just hours prior?  Just look at how Corporate America or our Governing bodies behave!!  Greed and Fear are the presiding states driving most of Corporate America and certainly our politicians.  But don't take my word for it, do some research on your own.

Most people won't take it upon themselves to do the research.  Most people won't even get curious about the way they feel.  Most people have turned over their free will to some "authority" and in essence said "tell me what to do, tell me how to think, tell me how I should behave" which is in essence thinking they are neutral on a moving train.  That is some scary stuff if that is the case.

The challenge is that taking ownership for your thoughts and connecting with your Spirit is pretty scary stuff, at least as it is perceived.  It's just so foreign to our conditioned way of thinking.  "Actions speak louder than words" is what we are taught, yet we forget that actions start from our thoughts and we end up doing some really stupid shit.

That is how deforestation takes place.  That is how literally destroying entire eco-systems happens.  That is how Bankers can commit criminal acts but face no punishment.  That is why there is more student debt now than credit card debt.  That is why dictators that the US subsidized with Billions of dollars were allowed to brutalize, torture and kill their own people all while the US government was completely aware of these atrocities.

The train is moving, and everyday that goes by is a stop we will never come back to.  What are you doing in your sphere of influence to apply the brakes.  You can't hold a thought pattern of "well I can't affect big government or big business or what is happening on the other side of the world".  That is thinking your neutral, when in fact you are contributing to the perpetuation of the problem.

So, how do you get out of neutral?  Go within, after all as one of my favorite spiritual teachers said, "If you do not go within, you go without".  Go within, get quite, and ask yourself, "What will you have me do?  What will you have me say?  What will you have me be?  If you will do this from an authentic place, you will get the answer.  Then act on it from your heart and see what happens, it will be miraculous!!!  But don't trust me, trust yourself!!!          

But, What about me?

What about you indeed!!  This is at the essence of every problem any person has and they don't even know it, because we get so wrapped up in our little world called our life and totally forget or tune out the idea we have a choice to change our perspective.  We forget that we could have a different thought and change everything in an instant.

Here is a real life, 100 pound example.  I work with a young lady with great talent, but is a little quirky.  One day she told me that she had a panic attack earlier and it was almost debilitating.  I told her if she experiences that again, come to me immediately and we can talk through it.  So, a few days went by and I was sitting in my office working on something when she walked in and plopped herself down in a chair and announced that she was having a panic attack.  She was visibly shaking, but clearly was open to discussing how to move out of that state.

I should mention that how I work with people is that I completely clear my mind of any expectation of outcome and I get curious about where the conversation goes.  Through dialogue, the solution emerges and its what I love most about what I do.  So, I asked her what she had been thinking about right before the onset of the attack.  She said her fiancée was leaving for a 4 day trip to the Midwest and she was not looking forward to being away from him that long.

Now if I had my "coach" or conventional counselor hat on, I might have gone into thinking that she has some esteem issues, or separation issues, or some other reason that caused her to physically react the way she was to the thought of being away from her fiancée for 4 days!!!  But the thought dropped into my mind "Whenever we experience angst, fear or any negative emotion really, our thoughts are centered on ourselves and knowing that, if we move our thinking to someone else, we can eliminate our problems".  She was already shaking her head when I asked her if that made sense.  She asked, "How do I do that?".

I told her to think about someone close to her that she could focus on.  She said she had a friend that just had a baby.  I asked her to close her eyes, and visualize her friend cradling her baby, maybe rocking the baby, and seeing her friend smiling with the bliss of being so close to her child.  She said she had that picture.  I asked her to visualize and "send" her friend and the baby her Love and picture it as pink energy surrounding the visualization of her friend and baby.   Now, I had never had that particular concept in my head before, I had no pre-conceived idea of what I was going to tell her when discussing her panic attack.

As I was walking her through this impromptu visualization, her shaking stopped, color began to return to her face, and I told her to just rest in that place and enjoy it for a moment.  She did and then opened her eyes and smiled.  I asked her how she felt, "so much Better" was her reply.  So we chatted a little bit about the shift that she experienced and the fact that anxiety or frustration or sadness is nothing more than our choosing that state over a much more positive state that is always available.

Sure, bad things happen in life, but its what we do with those things that determine how we experience them.  Do I get frustrated or down right pissed off at times?  Sure, but by being deliberate, I can very quickly move out of that state into a much more progressive state that also feels better, because I have made that process a practice.  By eliminating my thinking from be self centered, I allow wisdom from my higher self to come forth, and I have learned to listen to it because it always leads to awesome results or insights.

A mantra that I like to use is, "Do I want to be right or do I want to be at peace".  We tend to get so wrapped up in, "I'm going to do it my way, even if it means fighting and struggling and being miserable, I'm right and I'm going to pitch a tent in misery until everyone realizes I am right".  If we just stepped back and looked at the situation objectively, we could see it ain't working that way, and just maybe if we got curious about another way, the solution would raise its head.

The problem resides in the concept that we know how things "should be", you know, the way things work.  Well look around you, the way things "should be" and the "way things work" isn't working out so well.  The solution is "You could have a different thought" about the way things should be or how things work.  So do it, have a different thought and see what happens, it will be miraculous!!!  But don't trust me, experience it yourself!!!

What is wrong with humanity? I Am!!!

G. K Chesterson, an English Author was asked in the early 1900's by a London newspaper "What is wrong with the World?".  He answered very concisely, "I Am".   My gut tells me that what he meant can be distilled down by another quote of his, " Beware of no man more than yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us".  This is so true, but we refuse to even accept it might be accurate.  

Don't believe it?  Look around you at what is going on in society, around the world, and in nature.  We place so much "Value" on things outside of us that our society has become mentally ill collectively.  We are so easily accepting that an ideology or doctrine is "the truth" that we have checked our senses at the door and then wonder why so many people are miserable and are medicated with prescriptions let alone other substances or behaviors.

The Native Americans have a word they use for the behavior our society has embraced as the driving force of many people today.  It's "Wetico" and it means a sort of cannibalism where one culture eats or destroys another culture's way of life.   I think it pretty aptly describes what the Europeans did to the Native Americans when they came to North America.  The basis of the meaning is that Native Americans like many peoples of the world who feel a connection to nature and the earth and all living things believe that to own or hoard more than you need to survive is a mental illness.  Nature does not take more than it needs to survive, predators do not kill more than they need.  

I Am, being what is wrong with humanity means we need to wake up and see what we are doing to ourselves let alone all other living beings including Mother Earth.  If Human beings are living on Planet Earth 100 years from now, the term "Natural Resource" will be referenced only in teachings of un sustainability and the past.  They will live a dramatically different lifestyle and think dramatically different.  Darwin's "survival of the fittest" will have been replaced with a philosophy of "cooperation between species".  

Herman Hesse's book Demian has a passage that sheds light on our situation today.  The passage reads:

Each man had only one genuine vocation -- to find the way to himself.....his task was to discover his own destiny, not an arbitrary one, and live it wholly and resolutely within himself.  Everything else was only a would be existence, and attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of ones own inwardness.

Read it again, take some time to immerse yourself in its meaning.  Joseph Campbell referred to a life lived less than wholly as the waste land or the inauthentic life.  Collectively we are living in that waste land.  There is immense wealth (not abundance mind you) held by the vast minority of the population, yet thousands of children die of starvation every hour.  We have industries that are built on falsehoods that prop up "the economy".  Just those two scenarios are an example of attempts at evasion and flights back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of our own power.

I'll leave this post with a passage from Martin Buber (tapped in dude) talking about Grand Will as opposed to the Puny Unfree Will:

The free man is he who wills without arbitrary self-will.

He believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of him.  It does not keep him in leading strings, it awaits him, he must go to it, yet does not know where it is to be found.  But he knows that he must go out with his whole being.  The matter will not turn out according to his decision; but what is to come will come only when he decides on what he is able to will.  He must sacrifice his puny, unfree will, that is controlled by things and instincts, to his grand will, which quits defined for destined being.  Then, he intervenes no more, but at the same time he does not let things merely happen.  He listens to what is emerging from himself, to the course of being in the world; not in order to be supported by it, but in order to bring it to reality as it desires.  

He listens to what is emerging from himself (you have to go within to do this), to the course of being in the world; not in order to be supported by it, but in order to bring it to reality as it desires (we are not in this world, we are part of it).

We are in the middle of a Mass extinction.......

the kind that happens every 65 million years or so.  We (Humans) are the cause of it and we are not even aware of it.  Don't believe me?  Do some research.  Since modern man and the industrial revolution made its entrance into Earth's history, the number of species that go extinct every year is in the thousands and increases every year.  Don't believe me?  Do some research!!!

The good news is our world is pretty frickin' resilient.  Look at how the Gulf has rebounded after the BP oil catastrophe.  It's not totally back but is recovering much nicer than most people would have ever expected.  In spite of all our misguided efforts to completely destroy Mother Earth, she is still providing us everything we need to survive.  Thank You Mother Earth!!!

I was reading one of my favorite books this morning while pondering my next chapter.  I am accepting the call to adventure for something new and leaving what has been a great experience for me the past 23 years.  The chapter I was reading was on the underlying intelligence of life and specifically, how every cell in our body contains the DNA for the larger organism known as us.  Yet, as the cell matures it has the wisdom or intelligence to develop as a cell to be part of our heart or eye or finger.  The cell knows it is part of the whole we call our body, it knows it is connected to every other cell and likely every other thing in the Universe and it fulfills a role that completes the whole.

This cell regenerates pretty frequently and does so over and over in the body's physical existence.  It regenerates perfectly by understanding its role as a part of the whole and it releases the exact RNA (the blueprint from the DNA that tells it what to regenerate as) it needs to fulfill that role as part of the whole.  A problem arises when the cell loses its social identity and what its role is within the whole.  It reverts to blind undifferentiated cell division and begins taking over the area of the body it resides in.  Science has proven (Look it up, do some research, don't just believe me) that the cell does this due to its perception of the environment it lives in.  It loses touch with the guiding principle that it is interconnected with every other cell and is as important as any other cell.  It is no longer cooperating with the whole when the environment is not status quo or normal.  When a cell does this we call it Cancer.

I only bring this up, because it is a great analogy for what is happening to the Earth and Humanity.  Think of Earth as a cell in the body of the Universe.  Whats happening in Syria, or The Ukraine, or our government for that matter?  We are killing ourselves, little pockets of humanity killing each other for no reason congruent with us all being connected.  Look at all the atrocities that have taken place in just the last century.  It's almost blind luck we have not destroyed ourselves already, we certainly have enough nuclear missiles.

Take Religion for instance.  In human history, the sideways thinking people have about religion has resulted in more people being killed as a result of differences in beliefs about which religion is true than any other reason combined.  How does that happen?  The perceptions of the environment of those involved in "Religion", and no one religion has a monopoly on this unhealthy approach to  religiosity.    Anyone that says "my belief is the only true way" is cancerous to the whole because that is contentious and creates fear and angst or rebellion, none of which are healthy progressive states for a cell or Human to reside in.

Now Calm Down!!!  It's just a metaphor, don't get all sideways on me.  If that last paragraph pissed you off, I made my case and you can now see how hundreds of thousands if not millions of people have been killed in the name of God, or religion.  I personally believe there is truth in most religions when you look at the teachings as metaphors rather than absolutes.  We are as a society metaphorically challenged unfortunately.

So how can we as a world or humanity become Cancer free?  Simply changing our thoughts.  Having a different thought about our circumstances and understanding that circumstances in our life happen for a reason the meaning of which is up to us to determine.  I don't have to agree with you in order for me to like or respect you.  But if you try to steal from me, I'm removing you from my life and I may have you arrested.  Disagreements do not need to end in injury or death, but you also do not need a sledge hammer up side the head before you know its time to move on.  Choose your thoughts wisely, more on that next time.