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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