Relationships | Live What You Know

August 15, 2013

Spread Love Today…Everything Else is Fear

“The human emotional system can be broken down into roughly two elements:
fear and love.
Love is of the soul.
Fear is of the personality.”
~ Gary Zukav – from “Seat Of The Soul” ~

I distinctly remember the moment I learned that hate is fear. It’s intriguing. Even if we have never felt hatred, we have all seen it in its various forms. It’s just fear? Yep. And then you go on to figure out that all those other behaviors and emotions that go along with anger, resentment, jealousy, sorrow, spite, judgment, arrogance, even loneliness (it’s a long list)…they all come from fear. Once you connect those dots, it’s no longer just intriguing, it changes everything.

First and foremost, when you begin to see what is behind all of those terrible behaviors that come from fear based emotions, you can open your heart with forgiveness immediately to almost anything (truly anything as we get better and better at it…it takes practice). When I deal with these less desirable attitudes and behaviors in people or just things you see around you that stem from them, right before I judge it or react to it, I do my best to remember what it really is. I get a helpful little visual to remind me of what it really is…I picture a scared little child running to its mom for help. Maybe it’s the mom in me, but I think of how awful it feels to be scared and how children instinctively run for mom when something frightens or hurts them. Fear creates all kinds of toxic reactions when really the person just wants to be comforted by love. Next time you are faced with toxic behaviors, remember that person just needs some love. They are having a moment in fear…your love could bring them right out and you have plenty to spare…the more you give, the more you have to give. You will know best how you spread love. You don’t have to tell them you’re providing love for their fear (in fact, don’t do that, they don’t know it’s fear), you can give love simply by not judging them, by being a calm pure loving presence.

Practicing forgiveness in this way changes you and opens your heart. Next place to practice it is with yourself. Forgive yourself for your fear based emotions, attitudes and behaviors. When we realize that all that stuff we sometimes think or feel, and even our actions that we are not proud of, all just came out of fear…we can love the scared little child in us too. Give yourself some love and move on.

Creating space around our choices and actions will allow us to practice spreading love and forgiving everything else. When you put a breath or just a moment of stillness around your choices, you can choose love. You can picture yourself standing in the middle and you can decide if you want to turn towards love or towards fear. In every single thing you do, you can choose love or fear. Even the thoughts you think, do you want them to be love-based or fear-based? You can even choose the thoughts.

Another term for fear that I loved learning about is powerlessness. Whenever you choose fear instead of love, you have chosen powerlessness and given your power away. Your soul wants to live in love and knows that it is the most powerful force in the universe. Your ego chooses fear and creates suffering for you and others.

There is no need to explain the behaviors and emotions that come from love, we all have a deep knowing and connectedness with those…they just feel good…your heart delights in them and your soul remembers them well. Today, and always, let’s spread LOVE and forgive fear EVERYWHERE! Have fun experimenting with how you spread love!

I am sending YOU so much love!

August 12, 2013

Mental Movie Making – Make Movies in Your Head or Live in Stillness and Inner Peace

“We can learn not to keep situations or events alive in our minds, but to return our attention continuously to the pristine, timeless present moment rather than be caught up in mental movie making.”
–Eckhart Tolle

When I first heard Eckhart Tolle talk about mental movie making some years back, I can’t say that I got what he meant right away. It took some time and lots of mulling it over. I remember hearing him give a talk and trying to figure it out on a conceptual level rather than the knowing inside me that would have understood right away. Funny, I am sure the ego was wrapped up in all that mind chatter.

In a recent conversation I was having with a friend, I heard myself explain it so clearly. I had been listening to my friend and feeling compassion for her suffering. I was just really listening presently, I wasn’t thinking about what I would say, I was just really in the vibration of stillness and non-judgement and when it was my turn to respond to her, these words explaining the concept of mental movie making came through. As she reacted with enthusiasm and excitement about how true and helpful that was, I also heard it and understood it so much deeper than I ever had before. I heard my own words (or words borrowed from stillness really) and learned something more deeply from them. It was like one of those hugs from the universe I believe in when you just feel so connected to everything. It was such a lovely lesson that I thought I would share it here.

My friend had been describing dealing with a hard situation with a family member and sharing her disappointment over their actions, etc. She felt very sure of her position and even more sure that the family member was doing others wrong. The suffering she was creating for herself was obvious. I wasn’t judging her for doing that or judging the family member for her actions (which can be easy to do), I was really just listening in presence and feeling compassion for her and then the right words came.

I said to her – We get to decide how we let things effect us. When we interact with others, they have their perception of the situation, we have ours. Neither one is true ultimately and neither one actually happened. None of this “stuff” is actually happening, it is all in our minds. It’s all a movie we are creating as we look through the veil of our perceptions. In our movie we are the star and we have our supporting characters and guest appearances, etc. In the other person’s movie, they are the star and we are their supporting actors or maybe just an extra. Depending on the veil we look through and all the past experiences we bring with us, we decide how to interpret things and how much importance to give them. Sometimes things just roll right out of our awareness and sometimes we obsess and keep the movie running and running and running. We can make it get bigger and worse and keep it alive with all the movie creating in our heads. None of it actually happened. At about this point in the conversation she said “wow that is amazing, I never thought of it that way.”

We went on and had a lovely conversation, it is hard to explain the added depth in the discussion, it was just there. When we concluded our conversation, I felt so peaceful and I had this knowing that we had really shared a moment of glimpsing a truer reality. It was special and I was grateful. Conversations and moments like this when we can ease suffering and grow consciousness are miraculous.

It can be easy to get caught up in mental movie making, it’s even thought to be normal and people go on consoling each other and adding to each others movies by agreeing with their version, etc. Even in the exact moment of the very thing we think we are upset about, it didn’t happen. It was just the way we created it in our head and someone else created a different version in their head. No other mind saw it exactly the way we did. Once we understand this we can step back and begin to figure out how we are creating these movies and keeping situations alive in our minds that never even happened. We can begin to watch this happening and explore other options. We can free ourselves from this false reality and gain peace and learn to dwell in the power of stillness rather than an ever-changing movie.

As I mentioned before, I had heard Eckhart talk about these things many times and I had been reading The Four Agreements and applying all of that wisdom as well. I am so grateful for all of the great teachers presenting this information in so many different ways, yet saying the same thing. We can continue to grow and grasp the teachings and then we can learn to live it. When we hear ourself explain something more clearly than we had ever understood it, we know we tapped into the stillness that is Everything. If we can listen and be still and let that voice come through then we can truly become more of our essential self and much less of our reactionary self…one response at a time.

I believe our judgements can block the real answers from coming through. If I had been judging my friend for her feelings or the family member for hurting her so much, we may not have had that special moment when we could grasp a deeper truth. It’s so worth all the searching and practicing and trying to chip away at the ego to have true moments of stillness like this one. It wasn’t the little false sense of me that was able to stay away from judgments and touch the stillness, it was the big Me that is connected to everything. It was the one that I have been trying to spend more time with and get to know more in stillness. It was beautiful. I highly recommend it and I know that it is always there waiting for us to enjoy. We ALL have the ability to touch that very same stillness!

As we go out into the world today and always, lets practice living in stillness and turning towards presence rather than creating movies in our head that trap us in the past or take us to future worries. Wishing you all love and joy!!!

August 9, 2013

Make Your Weekend Last Longer and Have More Joy – With Timeless Presence

“The ego’s greatest enemy is the present moment, which is to say,
life itself.” –Eckhart Tolle

We can all agree that it would be wonderful to have the weekends last longer. Lets try it this weekend. It is a good idea (or the most important thing in life…depending on how you look at it) to practice living in the moment whenever you can. We all hear the buzz on it and try to do it at whatever stage in our journey we are at, maybe we can kick it up a notch this weekend. Practicing presence can take the time out of the weekend and make it last so much longer. It can bring more joy and peace to us and bless everyone and everything around us.

Ego work is required for true growth. You can’t battle your ego, it will just grow with the extra attention and even if you do seem to win for a bit, it sneaks in the backdoor and grows itself by assuming the new identity of the one with the smallest ego and the most presence. I want to use Live What You Know to share and try little ways of chipping away at the ego. I believe that you can shrink your ego simply by turning the other way – towards love. This weekend, lets turn completely towards the greatest enemy of the ego – the present moment. In doing so, we will access Love and Life. Everything will feel better and time will cease to exist, hence a longer weekend. I know that true presence doesn’t know it’s the weekend…but, since our thinking mind does love a weekend, lets just give it a try! Yay!

Wherever you are in your path of discovery, you can always improve your ability to access stillness in the present moment. You may be simply noticing the silence between the words in a conversation or adding a breath before you speak or you may be meditating for two hours every morning. We are all at the perfect place in our journey! I am not an expert on these things but I have been profoundly interested in adding more present moment awareness since I heard about it seven years ago. I have read and heard many of the experts and masters on the subject and I want to share their wisdom in little doses here whenever I can, both for bringing more peace and joy to others and also to keep myself in the spirit of growth and presence.

Knowing this stuff because I read it and heard it from the masters and living it are, of course, two different things, hence the whole Live What You Know focus. To practice truly living what I know about presence this weekend, here are some helpful little tips I would give myself (and you if you’re open to the idea):

Meditate first thing in the morning – whatever skill level you are at, even one minute to touch stillness to feel what it is like to return to it throughout the day.
Pray – set your intention for presence and awareness, ask for help to stay in that vibration and truly experience each moment in awareness rather than mind activity.
Listen – use listening for a presence practice. Truly listen whenever anyone is speaking. You can keep a present energy in the background and feel that while you listen, let any thoughts that try to creep in just float by. Don’t think about what you are going to say next, just listen without thinking and still feel some presence. Don’t give all your presence away while listening, just enough to listen well and stay present. Great practice – changes how you experience yourself and others…and everything.
Breath – add more breath all the time. It’s not really adding breath, because you’re already breathing, its noticing your breath. Noticing one breath before you speak can take you from reactionary living to present living. It is a great practice to remain present and be. Reactions are not present, they do not have the power of presence behind them. Reactions to what others say and do give your power of presence away. One breath to bring you to presence before reacting or speaking can change everything. It’s a great way to take the ego out of your interactions.
Joyful Living – get all the way into the moment and find the joy there. It is there! I promise. Even if it’s tying your kids shoe or doing the dishes, there is something to enjoy. You can look your kid right in the eye and get a giggle and a connection as you tie their shoes or you can appreciate the way the water feels on your hands and the sunlight comes in the window as you do the dishes. Whatever you do, the joy is there somewhere. Isn’t it awesome that it was designed this way. Do the joy experiment all weekend, you’ll find it.
Doing Meditations – You can turn anything into a meditation. You just pick what it is and practice staying completely present the whole time. It may be sorting the laundry, vacuuming the living room or brewing a cup of tea. It may be a walk or writing a poem. You truly can turn anything you do into a meditation. Let any thoughts float by, you are the sky and the thoughts are the clouds – they pass. Don’t jump on any of the clouds (thoughts), don’t resist them either, just watch them float by and your peace of mind increase. This is also a great way to start watching your thoughts without being attached to them – they’re just thoughts…only the power you give them or don’t give them makes them what they are.
No waiting – waiting is awful. If you find yourself in the situation where it seems like you’re waiting for something – a long line or the time for your next event, etc., just don’t do it. BE instead of waiting. Enjoy the present moment and realize the perfection in it as it is. Realize that you do not need to add anything to it and life will not start once you are done waiting. Life is already happening, waiting takes you out of it. Not waiting is a great practice, you can focus on the breath or smile or just be and observe without adding a bunch of thoughts to it. Waiting gives time so much power and takes you right out of the present.
Try something new – get into the unfamiliar. It brings a heightened focus to what you’re doing and takes you out of the thinking mind. Even if you just cook a new recipe that challenges you or take a walk on a new path, anything that is new and unfamiliar will bring more presence. Simple excitements in the little things are the best!
Create – write, draw, color a picture, anything creative. Releasing your creative energy and making something in presence is like offering a prayer. The still place inside you is incredibly creative, touch it and be with it and see what happens. Even just looking up how to draw something on the computer and following along can be a great experience if you’re not super confident in your artistic abilities. Just make something, even a fabulous meal is a creative endeavor. Touch the joy of creating!
Look without labeling – practice looking at the world around you without the lens of judgement. Try to let go of labeling good or bad or even naming everything. Even on a drive in the car, just be with all the things you see going by, you can experience the world in a whole new way without labeling what you see. You can gain a lot of energy too because all the labeling we do is exhausting, just being and seeing without labeling can be a really comforting feeling and can bring us to a heightened sense of awareness and presence.
Embrace the uncomfortable – don’t turn away from feeling uncomfortable. Often we feel a little uncomfortable and we cover it up quickly with one distraction after another. Don’t resist the uncomfortable feeling, sit with it a minute in silence and watch it transform into joy! It will! The joy is in the stillness!
Smile – I love the simple practice of smiling. When you truly feel your genuine smile, it does something to your heart. You feel it deep in your heart and it changes how you see everything. Smile a lot and smile at everyone and everything!

Okay, that is my incomplete list of some tips that may help us have more joy and presence this weekend. We may be able to have an ego-free weekend if we are doing all of this stuff. Wouldn’t that be lovely! Remember, presence isn’t something we can get better at later or when we’re more evolved. The only time to get better at presence is NOW. Flexing this skill and embracing these ideas can only have positive implications for the effects on our weekdays! But, we will deal with that in that moment.

I just have to take a moment to thank you for reading this! I am so very grateful for this platform and opportunity to share myself and encourage myself and others in this way. I am just getting started and I can already feel the difference in my life! I am so very grateful to you for taking the time to read my words from the heart…it is my true to desire to help us all live with more peace and joy! I am also profoundly grateful for connecting with others who find these topics meaningful! Thank you!

I send this with so much love! I think I will read it several times this weekend to help me stay in the moment too! I hope it helps you find more peace, joy and love!

August 7, 2013

Growing Together…Not Growing Apart

Recently I was watching my husband as we were going about a lovely weekend day and this funny feeling came over me where I thought – it’s so cool that it’s you. I was feeling how he is that same constant person I adore, but we have changed so much together over the years. He is like a fresh and unfamiliar excitement, and at the same time, my most comfortable and familiar spot in the world. What a great combination of feelings to feel for your spouse! I began pondering how we got to this place and taking the time to feel the gratitude for such a gift.

As I looked back over the years, a few things jumped out that I think are worth sharing. During the first years of our marriage, we were so busy with babies and providing for their needs, we never really had the opportunity to celebrate our anniversary. This was fine, we were in survival mode and just embracing parenthood, it was a choice and we allowed that to be our priority. Even though we weren’t pausing to celebrate our marriage, we were building a strong foundation for trusting each other and always being there for each other. Becoming a parent is such a huge change; we had already begun our changing together and doing it well without even knowing it. Our fifth anniversary was the first time we really celebrated. We began a new tradition that year. We made five promises for five years. We spontaneously came up with five things we would try to do together or get better at, etc. We put the list away and looked at it the next year to see how we did. We didn’t obsess over it, just a guide for our discussion the next year when we made another list…six promises for six years.

One of the promises that has been on the list each year is how many books we commit to read together that year. It turns out this was our magical promise! This promise came naturally to us because we had already realized that when you read something that changes you or means a lot to you, you naturally want your spouse to read it to. We had made this choice before and seen how important it is to honor what is meaningful enough to share with each other. When we decided to take it up a notch and commit to a certain number of books each year, we were opening the doors to much more change and growth together.

One thing that was magical about the decision to read together each year was the magical way the universe sent us the perfect book selections for us. We never chose ahead of time, we were just open to what came to us in a meaningful way. It became exciting to see how the dots connect and messages are delivered when you’re open and ready and willing to see and hear. It has been a delight to do this together. As we go about our life, we are always on alert for what the universe is sending our way. We are ready to embrace things together.

Another magical outcome of our little promise to each other to read meaningful things together was how much excitement it brought to our lives with being willing to try new things. Our partnership on some of these meaningful discoveries allowed us to really implement changes for our family and changes in our way of seeing the world together. We have embraced all kinds of new things and we have been up for them with excitement, here are just a few examples:

Switched to a Whole Foods, Plant-Based Diet – this was the first major change we did together as a result of reading. We read enough to know this was what we wanted and we went for it. This would have been impossible to do without the support of each other. I love hearing my husband say how exciting it actually was to try something so completely different. I think taking on this huge change together opened us up for many more new things.
Became Pyramid of Success Enthusiasts – this one was lovely for our family, it helped us teach the children about character what real success looks like – knowing you did your best. It has shaped many areas of our personal success and family life.
Poetry – We have family poetry time each night. It is a lovely part of the day we share with our kids. We get to tap into a beautiful frequency in the world, it’s a gift…our reading led to this delightful practice (I will detail our poetry practice another time – we love it so much).
Quit/Limited Watching TV – somewhere along the line, we decided to quit watching television. I am sure the reading and special family time with books had a lot to do with this. After a few years, some specific mindful entertainment has come back in and of course tennis, but other than that, we remain a family who doesn’t watch television and it has enriched our lives in so many ways. Just getting out of the habit of having the TV on helps. Then when you do decide to watch it, it is more meaningful and exciting. (confession – I do allow junky television to creep in sometimes during workouts…I figure one good choice cancels the other junky one…I feel better if I make it a meaningful choice, but I still choose the junk once in a while).
Great Discussions – as we grew our reading together and learning new things, our discussions have opened up so much and we have really become better versions of ourselves with much more interesting things to talk about. It feels like purpose and really living and encouraging each other rather than just going through the days.
Meditation – we started this together. One of us is better at it than the other…good job honey! We both know how important it is for supporting growth and stillness and clarity. We encourage each other to make time for it and we teach it to the kids.
Prayer – we feel meditation is listening to God and prayer is speaking to God. We are able to tap into the power of Life by learning and implementing these practices and our reading and openness got us to practice more regularly and know what we want to talk to God about.
Open Heart – I think this is what I noticed recently… the spirit of our hearts have changed together. It feels like we were meant to be together and to bring out these changes in each other. We are so very different (which is a good thing) and still have found such joy in making meaningful changes together. Within our love we can feel how much more open we have become and it is stellar!
Unfamiliar – in our reading we came across this and it is amazing. It is possible to become too familiar to feel what is going on around you. We have been able to foster the comfort of our familiarity and still find new and exciting things together that allow us to see each other in new and unfamiliar ways all the time…keeping it thrilling!
Courage – we found courage to be more of ourselves. We learned what fear really is and we support each other as we turn away from it and towards Life. We feel up for anything and more connected to life and everything and everyone around us. We have found a more soulful connection.

This is an incomplete list of just a few of the things that came out of one little promise we spontaneously made a few years back! I am so very grateful.

Reading together and changing together doesn’t mean you see things exactly the same way, it means you make it more exciting by sharing your own point of view and listening to another. It leaves enough room to grow and change together rather than apart and still be true to your own soul and honor your own journey. Now that we have been doing this for a while we aren’t so strict about how many books we will read together each year…we just go with the flow and know that we will do it!

If you don’t have a spouse or partner, you can still do this practice with a dear friend or family member…just pick someone who loves you enough to support you becoming the best version of yourself.

Lets grow together and be courageous about change and trying new things! Sending you so much love!

2 Comments

Category: Relationships

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: