Soul Notes
Spreading Love Through Joy
When you perform work from the center of JOY (which has a high resonance), the effort that you put out will lift people up. If you do meaningful work, but it isn’t from a place of JOY it isn’t as transformative. So by doing JOY, by being in JOY, you are not only raising the quality of your own life, you are also raising the quality of life of the people you serve. One person resonating at a higher frequency can...
Being a Conduit of Joy
Changing the footing of our life work, our daily activities is a challenging process under any circumstances. But initiating such a change away from the premise that our life must be productive in order to be of value, is almost impossible. We are indoctrinated with the belief that a life worth living must have meaning, and we cling to the expectation that what we offer the world must be worthwhile, else why go...
Stepping Outside of Mental Constructs
We turn a tremendous amount of power over to our mind, seldom questioning the force behind our logic, our doubts, our proof from an endless supply of evidence based on past, present, unpredictable future. We rarely see these mental constructs for what they are, internal and self-created. Instead, we believe them to be as real as the play upon the stage. And, if by chance something does not unfold the way that we...
Adventure into the Unknown
In the early days of spiritual exploration I relished the challenge of venturing into the Unknown. I thought of it as a Great Mystery that would be revealed to me through diligence and hard work, a reward for demonstrating my commitment to Spirit and perseverance in seeking to ‘find God’. I thought it would be exciting, eventually stepping into the Void, despite the necessary rites of passage including the...
CONTROL: Solution or Problem?
Every human on the planet, to some degree or another, has control issues. CONTROL is the force each of us exercise as a means to cope with life’s uncertainties. Some folks may be softer in their approach, couching their efforts as being assertive, or setting boundaries, or perhaps their right to exercise 'self-will', or their right to the 'power of choice'. The varying degree to which control is revealed has much...
Finding & Herding Rabbits
The capacity for the human mind to create solutions to problems we don’t even know we have is endless – infinity takes on a whole new meaning. There are the obvious ‘rabbits’ that multiply, secretly feeding our sense of fear and dread, we nonetheless embrace them believing they bring peace and comfort: Control, Consensus Reality, Group Agreements, Acceptable Norms, Projected Realities, and Dualistic Thinking. But...
A Case of Mistaken Identity
It is possible, nigh probable, that what we experience as the “fear of the Unknown” is really a case of mistaken identity. Some stalwart souls attempt to see such a fear from the ‘glass is half full’ perspective, reframing it to be the Great Mystery, the Unknown or Emptiness to be discovered and explored. Such a lofty approach is certainly one way to deal with the fear or anxiety, but it doesn’t really get to the...
Our Sense of Dis-Ease
Throughout all of human history we find the universal theme of “dis-ease” and throughout the same history, we are offered countless ways that humanity has strived to explain the source of this ‘dis-ease’ as a means of coping, if not eradicating the cause. What if our sensing isn’t a problem to be solved, but instead is the leading edge of the solution? Not because it points us to whatever cure we have struck upon,...
Accessing Creative Source
As a child I would often escape to Nature, find a field to lie in, and stare up at the Clouds -- watching the Cloud-People dance across the blue field, morphing, changing, bumping into one another, I would propel myself upward hoping to be enveloped into the cottony-softness and comfort. Little did I realize these were my early explorations into meditation and vision-seeking. It was years before I consciously...
Jolts of Awareness
It is common to create artificial 'aids' to help cultivate an attitude of mindfulness. Some people post sticky-notes aound the house, other's create an affirmation jar (pulling one out every morning to set the tone for the day), still others may 'schedule' it in by pausing every hour on the hour to breath deeply three times before going onto the next task on his/her 'To Do List'. What if we allowed life to be our...
Fish As Teachers
Every particle of our being is saturated with Life Force Energy. Much like fish that draw water through their gills, deriving the oxygen they need from the water, flushing out what they don’t need through bubbles, we are surrounded and embodied with Conscious Awareness. We could learn alot from Fish. Fish have developed an amazing ability to pull out of water what it is they need to sustain themselves, to support...
Awareness as Water
It is said that fish don’t know that they swim, that they don’t know that they move and have their being in a liquid. They simply glide and flow within the environment that is their Universe. Awareness as Water is very much the same thing. We don’t know that we move and have our being within the awareness that is all around and us, and through us, and is the Consciousness that holds our Consciousness within it....
Negative Space: Seeking What is NOT There
Retraining ourselves and the way we perceive is not easy. Seeking what isn't there is illogical, but can be fruitful. Applying the practice of looking, really LOOKING at negative space we can open ourselves up to a unique way of approaching life that is not predetermined or habituated. We create an opportunity to 'see' as though for the first time, much like a blind person who was given sight, we will discover...
Creation from Negative Space
For many years I struggled with owning that I was a creative person, in fact I would defer to my sister as the ‘artist’, the person in our family who was the ‘creative one’. Eventually I was able to by-pass the whole inner debate, and came to an awareness of creativity as a force that lies within -- an urge or energy that flows through and brings something forth. This energy can take so many different forms,...
I Can Fly!
Many people look forward to sleeping as a way to gain relief from stress or worry or feelings of powerlessness, anxiety, and hopelessness. Others seek similar relief through addictions – use of chemicals or other activities that allow them to fantasize or create the ‘life’ they prefer. Our desire to sleep ‘life away’ (or take a ‘trip’) is sometimes rewarded by lucid dreams in worlds unlike our regular life, a...
Seeing God as Negative Space
I remember years ago attending an art class where my teacher instructed us to draw ‘negative space.’ Instead of focusing on the object or the scene, we were asked to focus on the space around and in between the objects, then draw those shapes. We were encouraged to avoid drawing the familiar, avoid replicating what our eyes normally 'saw'; our assignment was designed to retrain us look for the shapes and the...
Would I rather be RIGHT or Serene?
I had a mentor ask me this question about 30 years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it! Of course I wanted to be RIGHT! I had to be RIGHT, my life (so my ego thought) depended on being RIGHT! I was terrified of being wrong, of making a mistake, of being found out. And if such an exposure occurred, I worked tirelessly to explain what had happened or to defend my position – vowing internally that I would never screw...
The Disappearing (Eclipsing) Self
Perhaps the simplest way to think of this is to imagine that you are peering through your eyes through the opening of a cave, and in that peering you see starlight, shooting stars, comets, or moving beings. It is as though you are observing reality, taking it all in, bearing witness to what it is that is unfolding. And behind your eyes there is Self-Awareness, that part of us that takes in the experience and is...