Feeling Moment

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The sun is not yet up and the sea breeze is chilly floating in through my bedroom window.  The trees outside once sang like the rain as their beautiful leaves rustled in the wind but not so now.  They are near barren now in full preparation for the winter.  A humming bird chirps in the distance and the sparrows sing as if at play.  I’m wrapped up warm in a blanket sipping coffee waiting for the sun to rise. 

I’ve had too many thoughts inside my head of late, contending with the life I have created, smiling at the beautiful parts, wincing at the more challenging parts but knowing from somewhere deep inside that it is perfect just as it is.  I realize how important it is in this moment to ensure we take the time to empower ourselves to just have a feeling moment.  I don’t mean one in which we let the ego’s superficial emotion wreak havoc or take control of our perspective but instead I mean taking a  moment to open up to all as it is just as it is and simply breathe.

I look back for a moment over the past year (well, couple of years honestly) and see just how much that I have truly learned and all of that learning culminates in a realization of late.  A decision I have finally come to that I can’t change comes ever greater into focus.  I’m ill suited for certain endeavor I have been engaged in for some time. I didn't choose it purposely but it helped me to do the things I needed to do for a very long time.  I've grown too comfortable in the functioning of it to change it but suddenly I realize the feeling within me tells me I am truly too uncomfortable not to change it.  At my age that is no easy task but miracles have always been at work in my life and I always expect them to arrive just on time at the perfect moment and they always do. Is that luck?  Nope.  It’s calculated awareness, taking action where action is needed and being silent where that too is needed.

I’m readying myself to engage in what I’ve known all along would make me happy but I never knew how to get there from here.  So, to be quite honest, I still don’t but I am not disheartened.  Allowing change to occur and life to unfold on its terms isn’t such a frustrating or impatient making experience if you don’t let it be.  I’ve found of late that if one sets their intent and holds the vision of what is most desired from the perspective of feeling that exists beneath the ego's superficial emotion, miracles can and do happen (the ability to notice the difference between the ego's superficial emotions and your true feeling is a bit of a miracle itself).

The very tops of the trees are now etched in fiery orange and gold, the birds are singing even more in anticipation of the rising sun and the traffic of a nearby freeway provides a hum that actually seems to add to the music of my morning in a wonderful way.  I think sometimes we can find peace more easily if we can accept what is, change what is truly within our power and just go with the flow in the mean-time for all else. 

After a night full of the real world intruding upon my dream scape, it’s now time to change those things in my life that are definitively within my power.  I can do my share and be content that the rest is out of my hands and fear not because even the parts I cannot control will ultimately bring about what it is I most desire.  I don’t know how I know, I just know.  ~Blessings of peace, acceptance and wonder dear beautiful souls.  I hope you enjoy every moment of every day you spend here fully awake and aware here on Earth.  You’re always loved and never alone.  Not one thing or effort goes unnoticed ever.  Don’t forget that not even for one single moment.

(photo is a random internet find and I lay to no claim to it's copyright)

Sleepy But Awakening Mind

I'm continuing a theme of sorts I started with my last blog post.  Well, if you have read any of my posts throughout the past many years you would likely see a very consistent theme unfolding.  That theme is a lesson in learning how to let life unfold on its terms instead of my own.  Now, having said that, I in no way intend to intimate that I am giving over my power to whatever and whoever decides to manifest within my reality.  Actually, the fact is that my sleepy still but awakening mind and heart begins to understand the truth of my life bit by bit, moment by moment and interactions from person to person throughout the whole of my physical incarnate existence.  I can look back and see how in certain instances with a lack of awareness I thoughtlessly gave away my power to whomever or whatever it was that seemingly threatened or frightened me in a moment.  I can see also how I rebelled against a prison of my own making in so many situations.  It makes me giggle sometimes the way my lessons have so perfectly come and unfolded in the perfect manner, at the perfect time and through the most benevolent and beneficial encounters.

I can assure you that it can at times be quite painful to lift one's self out of former paradigms of thought and action in the world.  Change can be quite unpleasant but as we all know from the existence of a butterfly that it arrives here on the planet in one limited and not so beautiful form, only to pull itself inward, cocoon itself off and allow the transformation that will inevitably come.  Once completed, newly unfurled wings begin the process of unfolding and dry in precious beautiful sunlight.  Once complete, a beautiful butterfly takes flight in sweet and beautiful currents of air flapping it's wings and imparting a beautiful sensation of freedom to those who stand still and are fortunate to witness with an eye towards understanding.  Life, when you begin to understand its intricacies and processes is so very beautiful I am often moved to tears.  In my childish states I sometimes give focus to, I am frustrated and tearful.  I'll pout and rail against whatever it is I think is unfair or unjust in my somewhat skewed assessment of this or that.  I'll engage in a poor me thought process for a time and then come through that by knowing that my allowing of understanding will transform my child-like state to one of a more peaceful, clear and fully understanding reality of what it is that I truly face.

This has been a long and strange trip thus far in my physical existence.  I could judge it and label it, find many who would agree with me, lay blame or take it in if I wanted but I don't want that.  What I'm after is the truth, what I'm after is understanding and what I'm really after is a return to the authentic human I came here to be.  I've learned of late that one of the truest forms of unconditional love for others is to let them think of me whatever they like without fear that their label can change the existence of the truth of who and what I truly am (Thank you Toni for helping me crystalize this thought).  Actually, my thanks should go out to every single soul who has ever imparted to me any action or words that I internalized in some victim manner of thinking.  I realize now these were mere perfectly timed lessons to help me understand that which was obscured by my own thinking and lack of awareness.  I hold no grudges, I hold no ill will and in this moment in time I feel nothing but love, forgiveness, absolution (as Toni would put it) because in a state of absolution it is almost as if you come to the true realization that there really is no transgression to forgive at a much higher level than normal human consciousness. 

Life is sometimes like going to a movie.  You watch what is projected upon the screen and view, interact or think of it as if it is separate from you.  Something you watch or engage in as you think right.  The reality is that life is how you create it, at least from the perspective of your own thoughts and emotions.  However, if you were to clear away your thoughts, labels, judgments and resulting emotions, you are left with a feeling and that feeling is the truth of a thing.  There is a difference between feeling an emotion and getting in touch with the truth of a feeling that comes from the core of the heart of your soul.  You have to learn to observe the difference but I assure you it exists.  As I learn to observe interactions from this state and this place, I have no urges to engage, circumvent or control.  I am at peace, tranquil, loving and understanding.  We all have our truths to uncover and I begin to uncover my own and loosen the grips of a tightly woven prison I created for myself with false beliefs and fears.  I hold them no more and will find each trace and nullify them as well.  And so it IS! 

A present particular challenge I face I have created for myself with my thoughts as a rock and a hard place.  At first I felt the pain, frustration and pure grief of this space in a certain area of my life.  I cannot rail against myself, a system or a paradigm that I, myself, have created for my own learning and at some level, amusement.  So, I began to shift my thoughts and the pressure increased.  The pressure knocked me to the ground hard and I kept crawling and feeling a sense of failure.   What I have come to realize is that I have not failed at all.  It is only a matter of a much needed and perfectly timed transformation from which I can allow things to be as they are and unfold as they will in the absence of fear.  I know from somewhere deep inside this change...this transformation is perfect, necessary and beautiful even if parts are perceived as painful.  We are always in motion, changing, growing, shifting and increasing understanding about things as they are and hopefully learning to allow things to be as they are instead of what we require them to be.  I cannot hold another's belief about me as truth because it's simply a perception that is not even my own.  I've done this the whole of my life and finally finding the smoke of this matter, following it's trail to a painful flame burning has sent me to a place inside where I can love the pain, love the fear and bravely face life unfolding just as it is.  It's perfect as it is...every word, every action, every thought and every reaction. 

In the process of my resistant understanding, realization has begun to dawn and my sleepy mind and heart awaken a little more.  I feel as if I've just been through a horrific battle with my arms tired as hell from swinging a broadsword of illusion.  There is no fight and nothing to flee from.  Life is just life, beautiful, changing, evolving and filled with grace and perfection unimaginable.  Learning to look for it and not only see it (that's just the beginning) but learning to feel that beauty from the inside out is a precious blessing and gift.  THIS gift I readily receive - again, and so IT IS!  I'm feeling a bit like the butterfly breaking free of the cocoon.  I suddenly realized I was in one and I'm ready to venture out, unfurl and dry those wings of mine and not only fly but soar.  That is my destiny.  It will be.  ~Blessings for your journey beautiful souls.  Every breath and step you take matters.  In love and light may you receive all the beautiful blessings your lives will continually bring you.

This post, I dedicate to all the powerful and amazing teachers in my life.  I thank you all from the center of my being.  I send you all my love always.

(Photo was a fortunate random internet find)

Internal Frontiers

Sometimes I wonder about my own thoughts.  I don't tend to even notice them until I feel them somewhere within my body, or lately, as a stressful condition takes hold of my focus.  I have a problem it seems.  I tend to take on too much.  Now mind you, I love, love, love peace, stillness and tranquility so very much.  But, I also love to learn about everything.  I'm so curious about anything and everything I find myself pulled this way and that and before long, all those curiosities stack up against the things I must think about and do.  Resistance sets in and the stressful thoughts are triggered.  I realized a long time ago that stress is very specific result to internal resistance.  Resisting what is instead of accepting things as they are will result in stress or feelings of discomfort.

I have to think about the sources of my own stress.  I am all too familiar with them but I'm not quite sure I can do anything to change circumstances at this time.  However, I am working on getting to the fundamental challenges that live deepest within the core of my being...who am I and what am I as well as whether I am living up to those things authentically day in and day out.  Sometimes I can say yes but very often I would have to say no.  I'm not intentionally inauthentic, it is just that I must focus a good portion of my time for now on what I seem to be losing interest in.  Is it burn out?  Maybe.  Am I just growing up and learning what's important to me?  Maybe.  Is it mid-life crisis?  Maybe.  All I know is that the stress begins with my own thoughts and the feelings behind them pushing me towards what I really want which will ultimately lead me away from an aspect of where I am. 

I realized something tonight driving home with the view clouded from my own tears.  Sometimes things are painful because it's time to change.  I realize deep down how very much I have changed.  My thoughts have changed, my desires have changed and the real person deep inside of me is breaking through this image of me I've allowed to take over as an existor (new word??? LOL) in my life.  All toxic horizons have been traversed and left behind me except for one and now that one becomes so painful for me it is all I can do to just breathe sometimes.  There are some themes and situations that can sometimes make us feel so hopeless and helpless but I know by far better than to give into those temporarily destructive thoughts.  I got what I wanted and that was to break through to the truth of who I am and what I wanted.  It's just that now I look around at some of the things that I've created and while satisfied in a way, I feel a sense of completion and an urge to move on.  So, with this last toxic seeming frontier I've created I've only one thing left to do.  That is, allow the change inside my heart and my thoughts to take over with a beautiful energetic magnetism and bring forth the change I most want.  The only thing I need do is be open, aware and stay positively curious about what unfolds next.  I need not despair toxic frontiers because I know I created my own discomfort just in time.

Change is always on the wind it seems in my life and honestly, I welcome it.  What beautiful blessings will this next series of changes bring me?  Who knows.  But I'm ready to make a change and take it all the way whatever it is that truly means.  I guess that's going to have to be enough to go on for now.  I'm tired of trying to make something work that can't and so, I give up and give in and do so gladly knowing that it is no failure to give in in this instance.  What it is I'm doing is realizing I've accomplished what I set out to do and now that it is done, I can move on to other things.  Time, time may not seem such a great friend at the moment as I wax impatient from time to time and become frustrated and tearful with the things I am feeling. In truth, at the heart of my soul I'm more peaceful in this moment than I've been in a long time.  The road to endings in preparation for new beginnings can take more courage than one thinks they can muster but that courage and strength is there and begins in the heart of a beautiful well of love deep within.  This, I know I can bear...weather...master.  So be it. ~Blessings for a grand adventure dearest souls.  Life might not always feel or seem perfect but truly it is and beautifully so.


(photo was a random internet find)

Change and Resilience

Sometimes I think the world is so very complicated and at other times, I think its very simple.  I guess it depends on whether you are in a state of joy and harmony or a state of sadness and discord.  Life's happenings can often seem to blindside you or randomly wreck your day.  Sometimes even when you see what's coming, no amount of fighting, railing against the world or screaming at the top of your lungs will prevent the inevitable.  Sometimes the inevitable is the only thing possible in order to bring some needed growth.  That growth is important even if you cannot remember why you think you needed it (or realize that at some level it is you who creates all you experience). 

This seems to be, at times, a world completely out of control.  In terms of other people and certain events, I think we can agree that is true.  But, there are possibilities within our realm of control, such as our thoughts.  Our thoughts and how we allow ourselves to perceive things -- well, there is an opportunity for control that is little exercised.  Adjusting our thoughts and resulting emotional reactions can make things a little easier to bear.  But, it takes discipline, desire and a commitment to put all of your energy towards seeing the light in the darkness before you actually begin to.  Trust in your own ability to see, eventually, the bigger picture is needed along with a LOT of patience.

Life is funny I suppose.  With all of us running around building straw houses of expectations for this or that, entitlement abounds with good and solid justification (or so we think) and at the end of the day it matters not one bit because what will be will be. Our houses of expectation will be blown apart with the next strong gust of wind.  Its not personal, even if at times it feels like it.  We can reduce ourselves to victims spilling our power out in every direction but that is really a waste of precious energy.  Breathing is the only thing a soul can do sometimes when the world seems fraught with nothing but disappointment and frustration.  When I encounter these things I start to realize that these "things" - disappointment and frustration -  occur not because I haven't tried hard enough or that I'm not good enough but simply because I'm most likely refusing to change and grow from a situation or the goal set has already been accomplished and it's time to move on.  A situation I cling too out of fear of change or fear of the unknown could never bring me anything but continuous frustration and disappointment.  It's a hard realization. At the same time, however, it is a beautiful revelation.

So, I watched the sun set tonight and I felt every color change deep within my soul.  I realized as much as I loved the beauty before me, I could not hold it.  I could hold the memory for a life time but the world turning is not something I can freeze in this moment.  I must let the vision transform as it will and then go.  I must let the world turn away from the sun, let the sky go cool and dark and still be okay with the coming night.  I realize in the thoughts of disappointment and frustration I have unlimited opportunities.  The light shines now in a different way.  The clouds as I'm thinking of hope and embracing much needed change turn pink and purple.  It's chilly now but I welcome the change as a necessary part of this framework of hours.  I welcome now too the changes coming in my life as a necessary part of this framework in season.  There is no twisting or churning in my soul.  As these thoughts flow, I can feel the alignment return.  I take a deep breath and a mental step in the form of a shift in thinking in the core of my being.  I choose to allow what is to unfold and to remain ever curious of what may transpire.  There is a beautiful grace in opening to the unknown.  There is an absence of fear when you relax into the shift of awareness inside.  I'm grateful as I stand here chilly with my partner smiling also enjoying this view.  I have much to be grateful for in this life and more things to come that no doubt I'll continue to hold gratitude for.

Take time every now and then to contemplate your frustrations and disappointments in life while watching the sunset.  Realize that this world and its happenings (or lack thereof in some cases) are not designed to hurt you but to get you to see how much love that you have inside, how much creativity and resilience you hold.  ~Blessings for your journey dear sweet souls.  Breath and find hope, relax and find peace.  It is always within your reach.

(c) 2013 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

Belief, Experience, Perception and Judgement

These words: belief, experience, perception and judgement run through my mind most days.  You'd think these words and their meaning might help one better understand life, love, this world and many other things but I've come to find that they don't.  They are not helpful to me at all.  Let me start my thoughts on each word and share a perspective.

Belief - A belief is something we're taught to hold from the outside world and those beliefs can range from whether you are a good soul or a bad soul, to religious tenets, Santa Claus or the Earth being round or flat.  A belief, to me, is an untested hypothesis of a person or thing that was conveyed as a truth that I must hold under some form of social threat of acceptance or non-acceptance.  I don't rely on belief alone for this reason and have come to a place in my life where I truly desire to identify and root out every belief I hold in order to test its validity.

Experience - You would think that experiencing something might render the truth of a thing and yet when I break that one apart, I see that it does not.  How do you explain many people experiencing the same things and yet they come up with different recollections or conclusions about what they experienced?  Consider also how some individuals seem to be mired in pain as a result of an experience while some who have had the same experience are invigorated by it (think roller coasters or sky-diving).  Conclusions derived from experience alone are not evidence of truth.  It just is what it is, an experience and that experience in description is subjective to the experiencer in the absence of objectively arrived at conclusions.

Perception - This one seems to me to go hand-in-hand with the above.  Through our experience we filter our thoughts and emotions to arrive at a conclusion.  That conclusion is more likely based on our own perception and not necessarily an objective truth.  Consider the perception of two roller coaster riders: 1) One may ride it, enjoy the experience and determine that roller coasters are fun.  2) The other may ride it, not enjoy the experience and determine that roller coasters are not fun.  Which is true?  Neither.  Both are perceptions.  A roller coaster is just a roller coaster designed to give an experience.  Another example I have is that we all may perceive the sun setting each day.  Therefor, the sun must be moving down the horizon, right?  Wrong.  It's actually the Earth turning that gives the perception that the sun is setting.  The sun does not really set but we, in our locales on the planet, actually turn away from the sun as the world spins on its axis.  Another example comes to mind:  Who has ever had an argument with a loved one or partner where each experienced the same situation and yet each fights because his or her perception is being foisted as fact unaccepted by the differing perception of the other party?  Again, where is the truth of a situation if two people experience the same scene differently and then they try to claim only one truth of a thing?  Perception can never give
rise to anything but provisional truth - it's true if you perceive it that way - we think.  But perception is not truth on its own even if you can find others who share your perception.  Perception is only how we rate an experience and catalog or categorize the good or bad of an experience.

Judgment - Judgment almost always is somehow caught up in the above three topics and depending on how it is meted out, may also not be made with the full understanding of a thing or situation. We quickly subscribe to belief (untested hypothesis), recall our experience (which is only ever single sided), define the experience with our perception (which is limited by our social, behavioral and cultural conditioning) and then judge a situation based on what we think is wrong or right.  After all of this, we may judge a thing and consider that true for all.  But it isn't in the absence of understanding.  Through objectively testing a belief, experience or perception, we can begin to learn the truth.  We just cannot assume a truth is evidenced by a belief, an experience or a perception and then form an  accurate judgment as a result.  In the absence of definitive or objective testing, how do we properly judge a thing or well, anything? 

I think about these concepts a lot because they seem to me (perception) to create a lot of disharmony and pain in this world when misunderstood. Sometimes they are used for good but in my experience it seems they have not entirely been used for good.  In human interactions I don't think these words are understood well enough for anyone to come to a judgment based on any of the above things and it's funny how common we use these concepts in an attempt to derive a convincing truth.  I have beliefs, experiences, perceptions and judgments too.  What I've come to understand is that these things are growing ever more meaningless as I live and breathe.  These things do not equate to the truth and I find I'm no longer willing to settle.  So, where do I have to go to get to the truth of a thing?  Well, it seems both simple and complicated but I do have tools at my disposal.  I'd have to learn a whole lot more about what truth is, how my beliefs were formed and test them.  Throw out the beliefs, perceptions and judgements of my experiences that don't stand up to the rigors of testing to objectively arrive at definitive truth.  How do we measure a definitive truth if we do not understand the premise from which we operate?

Understanding becomes the key to the door - or even knowing that you lack understanding...assert a belief not as a truth but as a belief.  Assert a perception as it is but not as a definitive truth.  Experience is subjective, please understand, and should rule no one's actions but the experiencer.  Judgement, this one should be exercised with caution, critical and accurate thinking before one takes an action or one could end up with foot in mouth disease or worse.

I judged these thoughts a bit crazy temporarily but I'm not done thinking through them.  I am motivated to understand them because from my perspective I just see so much chaos and pain created by misunderstanding and misapplication of these concepts and it just sometimes seems unnecessary.  If we devoted as much energy to solving the world's real problems as we do trying to dictate that our beliefs, experiences, perceptions and judgments were definitive truth, we would be living in a by far greater world than we live in today.  Someday we will learn. I believe that even if my experience and perception tell me otherwise.  I will observe, watch with patience and do what I can to help with understanding, promoting love, peace, tolerance and compassion because these are the tools through which we can begin to expend our energy in a more constructive fashion.  It matters to me.  I can't really seem to help that at the moment.  So, I'm just going to go with it.  In the mean-time, I understand that my beliefs, experiences, perceptions and judgements may be based on a framework I have very limited understanding of.  I could be all wrong or right on. Who knows.  I guess I'll just have to go deeper within to gain greater understanding and support the free will of others as I go, get involved where I think there is a need and just love all regardless of understanding.  What else can I do? 

~Blessings of greater peace, love and harmony for all.

(c) 2013 Jaie Hart (photo from 52changes.com)

Rising Elation

The quality of the light as it played across cerulean blue was beyond description.  You had to feel it to truly see it; become part of it in order to truly appreciate it.  Somewhere deep down inside the beauty captured perfectly in my field of vision shifted the stress and worry of the day into a bliss I've not felt in a little while.  November skies are my favorite.  The colors more rich, the depths more expansive and the colors seemingly so surreal. 

We exist in a beautiful place should we ever decide to take a moment to perceive that.  We often don't -- caught up in trivial human dramatics that won't even be remembered one hundred years from now.  I think I understand why we choose such experiences.  We merely wish to feel life in any form we can tend to manifest at any given moment in time.  I'm stretched thin in my existence of late and it's creating far flung thoughts that surely must have circled the moon and crashed straight into the heart of me.  I'm  feeling a bit inebriated along with my rising elation from the pure magical beauty of this light.  But I notice there too are the shadows that contrast and etch it ever more finely so as to be clearly and crisply discernible.  I am at once lost in a sea of slow moving clouds, floating on the tides of orangy pink light and gently washed across the sky with consciousness released from the depths of the normally unconscious part of my being.  Drifting weightless like a feather on a breeze my thoughts flow in and out, spin and turn and dissipate into the nothingness from which they came.  Holding any one of them seems completely absurd and so I don't.  I won't hold them but instead observe them dispassionately amazed at the speed with which they flood in and roll out.

The red light turns green and I must engage this body in corporeal motion again. A part of me sighs so deeply.  I wanted to come back but I didn't want to come back.  These cycles and circles, the games and lessons -- they never seem to change.  They repeat like a bad B movie stuck on shuffle sometimes.  Existence of late hasn't been all that unpleasant but everything has changed.  What seemed right now seems wrong. What seemed crazy now seems sane.  What I once wanted, now I don't know and so I just go on -- going through the emotions and routine motions of yet another extraordinary day in this beautiful paradise.

(c) Jaie Hart (photo copyright is as noted on photo)

Unanticipated and Unintentional Learning

Driving home from work a few nights ago I watched scores of birds flying in formation across the remnants of a hazy sunlit sky.  Red tail lights for miles is all I could see before me. I just wanted to get home and judging by the view of the road up ahead, I was in for an unexpectedly long drive.  I took a deep breath and rolled down the window and heard a cacophony of different genres of music as if they were all one horrendous song.  I looked up from the road as the sunlight caught my attention.  As I looked up I noticed that the sky changed in an instant from a pale water color picture perfect hazy autumn sunset to a vivid neon light display.  My irritation at being stuck in traffic melted away like a Popsicle on a hot summer day.  What a dazzling display I thought, perfectly perched on a traffic laden hill which gave me a moment of spectacular perspective as the sun began to drop ever so gently below the cloud line.

My thoughts went quiet as often they do at sunset and I moved into a complete state of being.  There was no hectic day left in my mind and the traffic ahead became insignificant.  In that moment of conscious decision to just breathe, a dark fog of anxiety lifted and I breathed a huge sigh of both awe and relief.  Months of frenetic and chaotic activity has had me feeling quite uncomfortable within my skin.  There is much change afoot in a part of my world that has been so very stable for a long time.  I guess the stress of it has played just out of reach of my conscious cognition much like a background program running on a computer.  You don't notice it too much but its effect is still present and can stress the operating system's capabilities a bit.

In that moment that seemed like an unmoving eternity, I was free.  I was free from the worries and cares I have held and I laughed a little knowing the prior feelings were only my own resistance to participating in my world in a way I don't really wish to.  But as many humans on the planet, I have bills to pay, a nice roof over head and plenty of creature comforts for my family to enjoy.  It is their comfort that is my impetus for continuing parts of my journey some days I'd rather not.  "This too, shall pass," I said out loud.  It all will pass.

The traffic began to inch along on this crowded popular route into my home town.  Feeling the city's energy at this point in my drive was interesting to say the least.  When I opened my senses I felt, relief, sorrow, anxiety, excited anticipation and then from within, my own deep love and appreciation for home.  Not my home on this planet but the home deep inside of me that is where ever I am.  My thoughts trail off chasing a whisper of a concept that we're all seeking to get "home" not realizing the "home" we seek is truly right inside of us.  That loving place of complete connection, total understanding and limitless possibility is always within us.  We just don't realize how the mechanics of that works because we either don't care mired in the ego's superficial pursuits or we don't know how to find it.  When the connected part of me took over, the landscape before me changed.  Well, my perspective of it changed anyway -- nothing was going to move these cars out of my way any time soon so I had a choice to make.  I could go back to irritation and frustration or I could sit back and realize that this too is just another projection I have chosen to participate in.

My beautiful neon light sky display dissipated into the half flight of a quickly setting sun.  An amazing seeming phenomenon at this time of year I witness now near daily. I normally love the autumn but have barely even noticed it until this moment caught in Friday night traffic during rush hour.  Gratitude replaced my former anxious irritation and I decided to just enjoy the ride.  The night got worse before it got better and even that didn't seem to phase my elevated state much.  I had errands to run after I finally made it home.  Not used to turning on the garage light before I stepped the two steps down to the floor, I missed one mid-conversation with my partner and have no recollection of what happened next.  One minute I was talking and the next I was falling in darkness landing knees first, thank goodness.  I didn't move right away centering my focus into my body for signals to let me know I'd not injured myself too much.  I sat down with my worried family rushing over to help me up.  Without any worry and fighting back tears of pain, I realized with relief that miraculously I'd not broken anything.  Every single muscle was on fire with life in a way I didn't appreciate all that much but I got up and got on with it.  The errands were run and finally I was back to the safety of my physical home.  Once there I took note of the many sensations I experienced in a short span of linear time.  I walked through them so curious...frenetic thoughts of a very busy work day, frustration in traffic not wanting to be where I was, letting that go to embrace a beautiful sun set and getting on with the business at hand rather hurriedly only to be warned it's unwise to walk quickly down darkened stairways.  I laugh now but it's funny.

There is a lesson to be learned here about not becoming distracted as well as refusing to let negative emotions run rampant if even unconsciously.  In our distracted states, we lose our connectedness to our true "home" and clarity of focus.  In our hurried states, we miss opportunities to see what is right in front of us.  In the absence of some forethought we can risk the unexpected and unintended misstep.  While seemingly negative, these are all good things to be mindful of.  For a few days, I'll have some painful reminders of the importance of paying closer attention to not only my physical state, but the state of my thoughts and the speed with which I let them roam unfettered, while labeling things in fearful and resistant ways.  It took a painful reminder to get that.  Sufficiently reminded is a concept I'm fully physically aware of in this moment.

I hope all are having a wonderful weekend enjoying time with family and friends.  Relish every moment of your beautiful lives as you live them.  Everything matters in more ways than you realize.  Blessings for a beautiful day.

(c) 2013, Jaie Hart (Photo, random but fortunate internet find)

Are You Manifesting Your Fears?

If you are holding on to fears, do not be surprised when you manifest them in your life.  

We come here to experience life and our fears can be our greatest teachers and motivators.  When you hold on to a fear, a part of you may become fixated and attach emotion to this fear.  Your unconscious actions will then seem to continually create situations that trigger these fears.  The cool part about the framework that we live in is that we create so much of what we experience.  We just don't understand how.

Let me give you an example. If you hold a fear of abandonment, you are likely to develop an insecurity.  When you develop the insecurity to protect yourself from the pain of the fear you hold, you are likely to behave in ways that may be off-putting to those who surround you.  This depends on the severity of the fear you hold. It may also shape your chosen behavior when your fears are triggered. In addition, the tolerance of those you have chosen to surround yourself with may chose not to stay with you, and you may end up pushing people away from you.  If this occurs, it may leave you feeling abandoned, reinforcing your fears.  We manifest very creatively whether consciously or not.  If you do not wish to manifest your fears, you will need to take the time to understand them and resolve them.  You will create situation after situation that triggers you until you finally understand and resolve your fears.

Not to worry, you have all the time in this world and the next and the next to figure out how to resolve the fear.  If you passively go along without addressing your fears, understand that you will begin to manifest these fears all of the time.  If you shift your focus from lack of control by holding a fear, to bravely and courageously facing the fear, you will no longer create situations to trigger it.  Namely because there is nothing left to trigger. 

When you can do this, you become more free and better able to manifest the positive things that you focus on.  Consider this, if you are so fearful of loss and abandonment and yet you are trying to create wealth and community, how do you think your success will go?  What you focus on whether consciously or unconsciously, you will create.  You are in charge, more so than you truly know.  So now, understand that the choice is yours.  What do you want to manifest and would you prefer to create this manifestation in alignment with the totality of your being positively or not?  Seek the truth within you first, find and heal your fears with love and then you can begin to intentionally create with much more success. ~Blessings of courage, healing and love.

© 2013, Jaie Hart (photo from gizmag.com)


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Beyond Belief: Good Versus Evil?

I wonder about this world and the construct I've been taught since the moments of my earliest understanding of the human language. I have always been taught that there has been "good versus evil" in the world.  We are also told that all of existence is a representation of light versus darkness. Interestingly, there are those who hold that there is an ancient fight between dark and light or good and evil.  What if this hypothesis is wrong?  What if you take apart that pre-existing belief that supports this hypothesis bit by bit? We should step back from the limited and up close experiential impression of life that is interspersed with this belief and attempt to see things differently.  Life itself was created by dark and light. Even the big bang theory creates a good basis for questioning the assumption of "dark versus light" in my mind...there was a correlation between both. There was dark matter and light matter in relative proportions that lent themselves to interactions and then reactions which formed various entities and different types of celestial creations.  What if this contest of dark and light is really just two aspects of the same whole - Life? Life in its myriad reflections is composed in part at least by both dark and light...by both good and evil.  Not one of us could say with true honesty that we've never done something some might consider dark, bad or evil in some way whether that be in our thoughts alone or in some cases, by our actions.

I step back a little further and think that perhaps the two concepts stem from the same indescribable Source and for good reason.  Maybe our understanding of the that reason may be limited in our current state of consciousness,  but there is a reason none-the-less.  Some interesting studies have taken place concerning the dark matter that exists in the cosmos and how under certain types of scrutiny, not only does dark matter exist but within some constructs, that dark matter seems to hold up the light in unexpected ways.  Pulling my thoughts from these concepts a little closer to personal experience, I ponder gazing up at a dark night sky. This is something I take great pleasure in for so many reasons.  Every time I gaze up I see nothing but the darkness interspersed with the light of stars that were born, held brilliant existence and then some burned out to be replaced in the continual cycle of birth and death.  I go back once again to the thought of light and dark and good versus evil.  As I recall how a night sky deeply contrasts and makes me appreciate the beauty of a billion twinkling stars, so too do I realize the interplay between dark and light in our human existence.  To be a little more precise with the example of human behavior I question, does not the action of actors conducting behaviors we find unsavory make us not appreciate those behaving good and kind even more?  Does inappropriate or dark behavior make us not wish to strive even more to do better, be better and work harder for good?  (Some of us at least maybe?)

If my supposition has any merit at all, then there must be some sort of design or purpose in the process.  This brings me to further questioning whether or not some souls actually agree to come here to play certain types of roles to teach others the consequences of choice, action and reaction.  I don't write to excuse or explain away what some might term bad or evil behavior in human beings that the moral majority has determined bad or evil.  I just mean to say that I wonder whether some souls don't come here just for the purpose of making the light behavior around them shine even more brightly.  When I compare the stars and my appreciation for the light, I must say the same is true in my experience with souls some might term bad.  They certainly make me appreciate those termed good all the more.  It also makes me realize we are all comprised of dark and light, good and bad whether or not we wish to hide or admit it.  We are all capable of great and wonderful things as a race of human beings but we are also capable of some pretty terrible things as well.  But maybe those good things and terrible things are only a matter of a limited judgment created from a lack of understanding of the true framework in which we all operate.

Stars are born, grow bright giving beautiful light and then they burn out over time but the darkness that holds them remains.  In this view, it seems the darkness actually supports the light.  Perhaps there are good reasons for this but we haven't entirely understood just why in the larger meaning-of-life kind of framework.  We can get to the mechanics through physics and other scientific disciplines but we haven't yet discovered the full scope and detail of the framework or fully understood that there is a framework much bigger than our limited capability for everyday thought can define.  The soul within me smiles as I write this morning because it knows in feeling what I still cannot fully articulate.  My consciousness on this side of the veil is much more limited it seems.  This grand design we experience here has a beautiful purpose in terms of what it has the potential to inspire in this Earth's inhabitants.  Our experiences, whether good or bad shape the whole of the resulting beingness that we are and have always been.  Free will dictates that we can choose how we will experience this world even if events occur seemingly randomly or by mere chance.  Even if our experiences are formed by random events or chance alone, we still have the ability to choose our perceptions of what we experience and no two of us see things exactly the same way under the exact same circumstances.  This for me, creates a wonderful diversity of experience.  This diversity of experience creates an energy of the whole that does something we are not entirely conscious of.  The collective of emotion, feeling and lessons can be accessed by us all through understanding that the differences exist.  We can agree to disagree when we experience the same thing differently or we can egotistically fight to prove that only our experience or perception is the right experience or perception.  We can choose to do whatever we wish within reason given the constructs of the elements of the world we exist in.

Some have called me a light worker.  I can't say that I own that title because I think it is incomplete.  I am not here to work the light but to inspire others to seek deeper meaning and appreciation for their experiences through this internal compelling urge to write about my own.  Am I brave or stupid?  Who knows - you can judge if you want.  I don't mind at the end of the day because I've learned about judgment too.  I can only experience a degree or two of a thing or person until I have found my way around experiencing a full 360 degrees of a thing or a person.  I find I'm continually reminding myself of this important fact.  I push myself to become more curious when I find I've entered judgmental territory.  Although I question our framework and perceptions (including my own), I do know that the judgmental landscape cannot carve out for me any understanding of truth as I seek it.  That doesn't mean, as often I've written, that I will not exercise my judgement in terms of what I will or will not participate in.  But notice that I'm curbing my judgment towards inspiring self action and taking no measure of pride in a negative judgment of another.  Oh, I've done it.  I'd be a liar if I said otherwise.  What I'm trying to say is that I've realized the futility of expending energy in that way.  It does not contribute to my growth but instead circumvents it.  I have come to this understanding by realizing fully that it is the dark and light or good and evil of all of our experiences including the interaction with all of the actors here acting in this play that is the path to the truth I wish to uncover beyond belief.  The light and dark, the good and the evil, these shape the sum total of all of our experiences.  I do not see this negatively but rather positively because this is where I've gained greater understanding.

I am utterly fascinated by the workings of the construct of this place we co-exist within.  I'm further fascinated with and very appreciative of my fellow brothers and sisters making their way through their lives.  It's no easy task although some make it look easy.  Just as many souls here can make it seem hard and such a struggle to attempt to exist at all.  Regardless, my heart goes out to them all in the hopes that they get from this place and this experience exactly what they are looking for.  The dark and the light, the shades of gray and the shadows cast from light around darkness all teach us something about our own framework.  I have no conclusions for others in my thinking this morning, just my early morning coffee induced mental meanderings.  The sun is coming up even though I can't see it.  The autumn blanket of clouds is here with us in my little part of the world.  I'm grateful for this moment to sit and to drink in the delicious feelings deep within that have resulted from the whole of my own experiences here on Earth.  There have been hard and terrifying times for me but there too have been times of such pure and pristine love and beauty that I am loath to describe them.  I fear my own limited vocabulary may take away from my experiences as silly as that sounds.

As I look back and reread these words I have written, I think I have come to a bit of a conclusion with my thoughts after all.  Everything in existence stems from the All of Everything, the Source, whether or not I understand it or can articulate the reasons why and whether or not a single other agrees.  Both our experiences of light and dark emanate in some manner from the Source.  We are given the ability to think and to create so we can do what we will with the lightness and darkness of our own thoughts and experiences and as a whole, we certainly do.  I breathe in deep the cool air of the morning and let all these thoughts go.  I need not trace every detail as I contemplate constructs. The nuances would simply drive me mad.  I only intended to scratch the surface just enough to give you something to consider.  Perhaps, maybe, some food for thought to expand your perspective beyond beliefs (which I consider to be untested hypotheses from collected or imposed theories). ~Blessings for an expansive and thoughtful day beautiful souls.  I hope you make the best of every single thing you encounter.  Savor the good and appreciate the challenging for the thoughts and actions these concepts compel you to live with and better yet, to truly understand.

(c) Jaie Hart (photo/words)