What would it be like if you truly trusted your life – the state of your health, your emotions, your mate, your boss, your best friend – in other words, trusted exactly what is happening? Rather than arguing with life, you showed up for it, knowing that it is for you. What do I mean by that? When we first arrived on this planet, we were wide open fields of energy. Life flowed like the clouds in the sky. Then, over time, we were hit with bombs full of shrapnel made out of conditioning from our parents, our siblings, teachers, next door neighbors, television and religious authorities.

We didn’t know how to deal with all of the feelings that arose inside of us as we were being conditioned into unconsciousness (anger, fear, sadness, self judgment, confusion, despair are some of its core building blocks), so we learned how to hold our breath, tighten our bodies, and retreat to the world of our minds, thinking about life rather than being present for it. And the free-flowing aliveness that we were – the joy that is inherent in young children – was turned down, just like a light on a dimmer switch. We got caught in trying to manage our lives to avoid waking up the deep holdings we carried inside of ourselves. And that is suffering! We try to control life rather than being fully here for it, while the shrapnel influences us from underneath our everyday awareness.

Instead of always trying to do life, feel what it would be like to show up for life exactly as it appears, including all of the deep feelings you have tried to manage your whole life. You would understand that life is bringing you the perfect set of experiences you need in order to bring your shrapnel close to the surface so it can be released. It is a huge step in awakening when we stop arguing with life and instead are curious about what any given situation brings up inside of us. At that point, we have moved out of the victim mode and into consciousness. Even if it is just a moment of being curious about what is happening right now, it is a moment of consciousness and it is powerful.

The next step is to bring our focused attention into exactly what is happening inside of us, especially in difficult situations. What do I mean by that? Let me use an example from my own life which is in an interesting phase right now. A couple of months ago I began experiencing an intense pain in my left hip. Not knowing what it was (hip dysplasia), I continued walking on it, then limping, then a cane, then crutches and now a scooter. Needless to say, my activities have become very limited. In addition, I can’t sleep at night because of the pain, have to ask for lots of help (my conditioning has a very hard time with that), and last week my daughter was scheduled to testify in her rape trial. Needless to say, there are lots of deep feelings racing through me right now.

When I get caught in my head, resisting what is going on and falling into the victim mode (which hates and fears this experience and truly feels sorry for itself), I suffer. But I only spend short periods of time in that reactive place, and quickly I return to consciousness by bringing my attention into my immediate experience. I am able be present for levels of despair, anger and fear that have been waiting my whole life for me to wake up enough to give them what they need – my loving attention – so they can be freed. When I am that present, not leaving myself when I most need myself, it brings up waves of joy and gratitude. If this intrigues you, you can read the chapter on Treasure Hunting with Sensations from my book, The Gift of Our Compulsions.

So, I may not like this time of my life, but I deeply appreciate and respect it. Life is giving me the opportunity to release some very deep holdings I have carried around my entire life. Much shrapnel has arisen in my mind and has been met in my heart. And the free flowing aliveness I knew as a child is now dancing through my whole body. Such gratitude!

Be light, Mary

We have a choice about how we are going to respond to what is happening in the Gulf – from fear and reaction or trust and vision. To make this shift from reaction to response, we need to see that all great evolutionary shifts have happened in the midst of chaos, as the old way is dying and a new is being born. This has occurred countless times on our planet, and right now you and I are living in the middle of one. In fact we are the evolutionary shift. The shift is happening inside of us. We are being moved out of an old way of perceiving that says controlling and struggling with life will bring us the safety we long for.

The old way of perceiving does not recognize the sacredness of our planet and it believes that getting ‘more’ (whether it is money, food, sex, success, etc.) will bring the peace it promises.This old paradigm also believes in ‘them’ and ‘us’. ‘We’ are doing it right and ‘they’ are doing it wrong. We have a choice whether to resist or to allow ourselves to be moved into a new way of seeing.

We are ready for a new consciousness – one that does not divide but that unites instead. It bows in wonder to the awesome mystery of this living moment and realizes that recognizing the sacredness of everything (including oil spills) transforms all that we touch. It also sees that this moment in which you are reading this newsletter is enough. In fact, nothing you can try to add to your life will be more satisfying than true connection with right now. It also recognizes that there is no ‘them’ and ‘us’. We are all in this together, floating on a tiny blue green jewel through vast oceans of space.

This is a call to a level of consciousness that sees the intelligent oneness of everything.  Can you allow it to wake you up out of fear and into trust, into the knowing that life knows what it is doing?  Can you allow the place beyond ‘them’ and ‘us’ to wake up inside of you and realize that we are just characters in this theater of awakening that is life?

So I invite you to notice when you go into fear. That is old paradigm. Yes, I know, it feels like the earth is bleeding in the Gulf coast, and she is.  Yes, what is happening in the Gulf is devastating but it is also our wake-up call.

The Dali Lama was asked if he thought humanity was getting better or worse, and he said absolutely better.  He cited the fact that even 50 years ago if there was a major disaster somewhere in the world, basically the people in that region dealt with it.  Now the whole world responds.  Can you see our shared heart in the response to the Tsunami in Thailand and the earthquake in Haiti?  Can you imagine a response of the heart to the oil spill?  THAT is the evolutionary shift.  It doesn’t mean that things don’t need to be done.  We all, whether we are a person, a company, or a government need to learn from our mistakes (mis-takes).  But let us leave the fear and blame out of it.  Let us move into the new level of consciousness that works with what is unfolding in our lives rather than resisting or blaming.  For whether we see it or not, Life is in charge, and we are part of its unfolding.

Who we think we are is floating in the vast spaciousness of who we truly are.  And our mind (the struggling self) constantly seeks to deny this and to keep itself caught in struggle

Here is Eckhart Tolle’s definition of the struggling aspect of the ego quoted from The Power of Now.

“As long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emotional pain leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you. It merges with the pain from the past and becomes lodged in your mind and body.  This accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind.  If you look on it as an invisible entity in its own right you are getting quite close to the truth.  It is the emotional pain body

And it has 2 modes of being: dormant and active.  Anything can trigger it, particularly if it resonates with a pain pattern from you past.  The pain body wants to survive just like every other entity in existence and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identity with it.  It can then rise up, take you over, ‘become you.’  It will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence and even illness.

If you were truly conscious of it, the pattern would dissolve.  It is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness.  It is afraid of being found out. Its survival depends on your unconscious identification with it as well as your unconscious fear of facing the pain that lives in you.  But if you don’t face it, you will be forced to relive it again and again.  The pain body may seem to you like a dangerous monster that you cannot bear to look at, but I assure you that it is an insubstantial phantom that cannot prevail against the power of your present.

The moment you observe it, feel its energy field within you and take your attention into it, the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come.  I call it presence.  You are now the witness or the watcher of the pain body.  This means that it cannot use you anymore by pretending to be you, it can no longer replenish itself through you.  You have then found your own innermost strength.  You have accessed the power of Now.”

We can relate to the pain within us rather than being identified with it.

Know that whatever struggles come are here to highlight your particular brand of pain body so you can SEE it and realize you are NOT it.

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The 3 qualities of mind that help us see through the struggling self are curiosity, compassion and living in questions.  I think it is helpful to understand that the words welcoming and spaciousness both speak to the movement of compassion and can be cultivated even if compassion seems unavailable.  Welcoming is what the second question is all about..”For this moment can I let them be here?”

May we all come to know that everything inside of us that we resist is truly something that is there to awaken us into consciousness.  And may we know that everything we have resisted is something that longs for our acceptance and attention.