Seekers on the Path

Seekers on the path of spirituality often wonder how they are faring on the path, seek confirmation and validation of their progress.  If there is one thing that I’ve learned on the seeker’s path is that there is no validation, no confirmation and sometimes what might seem like down right obstacles to understanding.  But, before you get discouraged, let me tell you that THAT IS where the true testing and fun really begins.  Many of us seek this path to spirituality for answers about life, the truth or simply understanding our own existence.  We read, we take classes and we meditate upon puzzle after puzzle only to be left with, well, nothing.  Well, maybe not just nothing as there are some really cool things you learn about life in the process but if you’re not careful, those things become mere distractions.

As you continue the journey and get closer to the truth, you begin to realize you are truly seeking your own origins.  I don’t want to give it all away or spoil the fun too much because there is a lot to be learned in the journey on the path.  But nothing is more awe inspiring than our origins.  But when you sit down with that thought – origins – and query your own mind, these feelings start to rise and I’m not talking about emotion.  These feelings are the beginings of your greatest understanding – your greatest teachers.  You just need to learn how to translate these feelings.  They are not easy at first but become so over time and the more time you spend with those feelings in the quiet stillness of your own mind, the quicker you will understand.

One of the ways that you can learn to translate much better is to learn ways of honoring yourself, learning to be gentle with yourself and holding the absolute highest compassion for yourself for all you’ve done, how far or not you’ve come and what you have or have not yet learned.  When you begin to understand those rising feelings are messages to you from you it is easer to make a commitment to self-discovery and to commit to that self-discovery through whatever path calls to you most.  Maybe it is yoga, exercise, community interaction, classes, reading or whatever it is that calls to you.  These things that call to you do so for a reason and that is what you must pay attention to – the stuff going on inside of you.

Often times we must clear away many layers of negative environmental psychology before we can begin to understand the feelings, true feelings rising within us and that is perfect.  I suggest that you allow the process – your process to unfold as it is unfolding and that you not seek to jump ahead of where you are because every breath and step of the journey matters just as you matter.

In the end, you’ll be amazed at what you will begin to truly discover.  Life, light, love, infinite compassion and intensified understanding.  But then what?  Well, you just go on living your life being the best you that you can possibly be and yes, I mean learning to be authentically you and not just sometimes.  Authenticity is the secret key that unlocks many doors.  But you have to find out who you truly are from the inside out, not what the world or what someone else tells you that you are.  It won’t help you to have some one say you are a magical this or that until you discover it on your own without any interference.  Yes, there are many very good ways, courses and teachers that will help you but they’ll only point you within and that is good.  A good teacher won’t give you all of the answers but shine the light into the dark places you must go to find your answers.  This is a beautiful process and it will only truly cost you your fear and doubt.  Let them go, you need them not one bit.

So, should you be a seeker on the path, traversing it alone and on your own, know that you’ll find your way in perfect time.  You’ll also learn that you aren’t really alone, you only seem to be.  Call on your higher self in times of doubt or fear and go within for the answers and you will find them.  For now, I and the other teachers on the planet will hold a space for you, one of courage, love, compassion and light.  You’ll get to where you need to go and if you seem to fail?  So what!  Get up and start over again.  Dead-ends mean nothing.  Your quest to find you means everything.

Blessings of love and light.

Amazingly Beautiful World

Taking It In? Are You Sure You Want To Choose That?

It is a funny world that we live in some times.  We take certain things so seriously.  For example, someone may proclaim to any who will hear, their opinion of us, we learn of this and we take it in right to the core, through the inner veil of protection and then the sword has left its mark leaving us with nothing but anger, pain or feelings of incredulousness.  But you know, and I want you to know, it does not have to be this way.  Let me repeat this so you really, really get it…it does NOT have to be this way.

Let me explain.  There is no one who can completely define you in the outside world because they only ever experience a facet of you.  You are multifaceted, therefore, no one can take all of you in at once so nothing they say can truly define you.  Let those who would decry your evils from the mountain tops and choose not to take it in.  It isn’t you they are truly decrying.  It is that little part of themselves, more than likely, that they are truly upset with and projecting that onto you gives them the illusion of relief if only momentarily.

You see, no one is ever uplifted at the expense of someone else.  Oh, I know that it sometimes seems like that is the case.  But the reality is, it just isn’t true.  That person who gets a momentary lift by taking any sort of pleasure in your pain is either unfeeling or has issues. That has absolutely nothing to do with you.  So, let them cry and tell everyone about your wrongs.  It’s not you they are telling stories about.  You know you.  You know your story.  Stand in your own light with dignity, with much self- love and an infinite well of self-respect.  You know in the heart of the core of you these words I speak are truth even if your mind cannot yet fully wrap itself around this concept.

At some point you will become so tired of letting people get to you that you will just stop and move on.  You’ll learn to ignore them and live your life fully and with as much joy and happiness as possible and perhaps, your living life fully and with joy may as yet set an example for others to follow. 

It is hard to make that choice between taking it in and getting even with words or actions or deciding to walk off of an illusory battlefield.  But you do hold this power within you.  You do hold the power to stand tall in your own light.  So, I invite you to explore this concept. When next someone attacks you verbally, get still and quiet and feel what the center of your soul is telling you.  It will tell you if the words are true and if they are, well then you’ve just gained a great opportunity to learn a life lesson and change if you want to.  If it is telling you that what is being said is just rubbish, then don’t let it in, shrug it off and go about your life as the beautiful human being that you are.

Blessings of great courage, love, compassion, joy and happiness to you all.

 

© 2015 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

The Pacific

Brine scented air

And gentle crashing waves

The Pacific Speaks in whispers

The adept know to listen

Wonders never cease

When you’ve got toes in the sand

The wind carries laughter

Of children playing, dogs barking

And People Talking about life

I observe, a part of and apart from

All that I see and experience in a moment

I watch a surfer catch a wave in

He paddles right back out to do it again

Others sitting on their boards

Just communing with the Pacific

There is a peace there she speaks

One like no other

I understand

I truly do

She speaks to me too

I listen

© 2015 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

This Moment

The warm sun teases the scent

Of Alyssum flowers into the air 

It’s warm for November

But the skies are still that deep color

Of cerulean blue

Seen at no other time of year

The breeze is comfortable

The traffic is loud and heavy

My thoughts drift

To the Meadow

I fondly recall

From another time

Barefoot walking, laughing and sunning

Toes dipped in ocean waves so cool 

The memory fills my heart and soul

Reality comes back with the fleeting sound

Of humming bird wings

And i smile all the more

As I bear witness

To a little yellow butterfly

Dancing upon the shimmering blades

Of the last traces green grasses

This is how I see life today

Through my heart first

Would that I could

Hold onto this feeling every day

Just like that sacred place

In my heart does

It’s truly beautiful there

I think I shall endeavor

To intentionally remember

This moment

Of my many moments,

Always

© 2015 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

 

Elements and Origins

I saw the Body’s Exhibit over the weekend and I have to say that I am absolutely astounded at what amazing miracles we are.  Just to see how every piece and part of our physical bodies works perfectly in harmony to allow us to see, hear and do all of the things that we do each day is amazing.  It is so easy to take that for granted.  Never the one to be satisfied with the superficial, I must go deeper than the physical body.  It is elemental in nature as I have written of before, made from all of the elements, perfectly.  But what is behind it, beneath it or above it?  What keeps it going?

Seeing the teeny tiny parts of the brain, I am sorry but I am not a believer that everything we are comes from just the biological hunk of fibers referred to as the brain that is merely a component part of the suit we wear.  What I have come to understand is that we are so much more.  An elemental is just that, an elemental – full of pieces and parts formed with automatic and selective processes that put the body in motion.  But what animates that form intelligently?  I call it Consciousness.  Others use different terms.  When I say Consciousness, think Energy.  I mean Consciousness with a very, very large C more in line with the absolute infinite or “All of Everything” as is quoted in the Kybalion.  Others may use the term Cosmic Consciousness, God, Goddess or Source.

There are some very unscientific theories that what animates the elemental human is a very tiny part of that infinite and vast Cosmic Consciousness.  You might call that tiny portion the spirit or the soul.  When that animating consciousness withdraws itself, the body ceases functioning and dies.  But that consciousness lives on.  Energy cannot die but can only transform.  As I walked around viewing the exhibits, I saw the forms of the elementals reduced to their most varied and basic parts and I realized the body is truly only a vehicle for our consciousness or Consciousness, I should say.

Theologians have innumerable and sometimes synchronistic positions on what we are and where we came from.  While I respect those positions and related theories, I think they fall short of the truth.  It’s something I feel deep within from that place I know I can trust more than anything.  There is a knowingness that arises within us all when we have learned to become very still and quiet.  This knowingness belongs to the chain of command, so-to-speak, that goes from the smallest part of our Consciousness straight to the Largest most Infinite part of our Consciousness.

We often take bits and pieces of premise for granted or truth without digging deeper for the evidence.  Take our very existence as a prime example.  We rest our theories on writings from antiquity but where is the proof?  There isn’t any proof.  If we intended to prove how we came to be, there are so many intangible ideas we must contend with.  Science contends with this every day and they must create a premise from which they can build their hypotheses and theories.  So, we started somewhere and just went with that and we still hold today that we were created by a white bearded man who created two individuals in His image, one male and one female, yin and yang.

In the creation myths that abound from various cultures all over the globe, there are very similar and also very different tales of our origins.  Our origins seem a bit obscure, to put it lightly.  Some think we are aliens.  Maybe we are.  Some think we evolved from apes or fish.  Maybe we did.  Some think we were created by the Great White Bearded God that lives in a magical kingdom called heaven.  Maybe we did.  Some believe that we individuated from the great Cosmic Consciousness to enter this dimension as a holographic elemental image for the purpose of having an experience that we take back to the Source of the Cosmic Consciousness when we’ve completed our experiencing.  Maybe we did.

Where does that leave any of us who are wondering about our origins?  How do you choose when belief is all you have and very little if any evidence at all? Some might say, “Now Jaie, you must have faith.”  “In what?,” I would respond.  I have faith in my Consciousness.  You see, I had the privilege of being Conscious outside of the body in this vast nothingness and everythingness that was so peaceful, so very quiet that for the first time in my life I could think and be without everything that comes with these elemental trappings.  But even that experience is only filtered through my perception so cannot be objective.

When I go with that inner knowing feeling, I feel that I am a tiny part of a much bigger Spirit that stays always and ever connected to Source and in my moments of greatest inspiration or intuition it is THAT voice that speaks to me subtly, encouragingly and lovingly to guide me through this situation or that.  When I consider such things, origins become a bit unimportant as I turn to other questions like “Why am I here at all?”  Wouldn’t that be a cool question to have answered?  Again, I can’t go with anything the outside world would project upon me because it wouldn’t resonate as truth with me, with that still small voice of the Spirit that comes through nudging me this way or that.  My dissatisfaction I find is nothing more than an attachment that I really need carry no longer.  My Spirit knows where it came from and the elemental me that will return to the dust from whence it came when my consciousness pulls out for the last time will query no more. 

In all my questing for answers to the unanswerable, rather than give in to the frustration or buying anyone else’s answers as a definitive truth, I will go with what I trust and that is me.  I trust me implicitly.  My soul and spirit are clean.  I trust what comes through and I’m reassured that I need question no further.  I need only live and love and enjoy my time in this type of experience until my consciousness moves onto something else and be content with that.  Can I do it?  Yes, I think so and it starts today. 

In a way, I will always be an explorer of consciousness and seeking understanding of all of the things that create our behaviors and desires.  There is a part of me that wishes to protect an Earth that needs no protecting (yet another attachment).  All is perfect as it is because from it we are learning to take greater care.  From the tragedies we learn to be more careful with each other and ourselves.  From the hard times we learn to truly find gratitude for the good times.  From the desolate and lonely times we learn to turn within for comfort, solace and love.  These things and realizations take lifetimes sometimes.  And, that is okay.  So, suffice it to say, I’ve come to accept life on its terms and to have faith in myself to master whatever task I am called to master. That is my Consciousness and within that, I have that much faith in myself and no fear of failure.  Failure is learning. Am I any closer to the truth?  Well, I can’t say that I am for anyone else but I can say so for me.

(Photo:  NASA)

In Human Relations is Memory a Gift or a Curse?

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Sometimes I think the answer is both.  If you look back and recall a beautiful memory and it uplifts you, well I think then, that a memory can be a wonderful thing.  But what if our memories keep us trapped in a story that no longer belongs to today.  I could tell you of such stories in my life.  Some are tragic, some might make me incredulous if I fall too deeply into them and some would be absolutely unbelievable.  As I sit and consider some of the challenges in my own life, some things point back to memories.

Well, I wish to transform them right now with what I know.  I’ve become a yogi in training of late and am learning daily to see things differently.  I think my whole life I I have been in training for this moment and that, right there is the crux of my point.

We think the terrible and tragic things in our lives are punishment and proof of our unworthiness or worse, such things lock us into this victim thinking (now that is the real tragedy).  But think about this for just one moment.  How could you be the amazing and wonderful being and person that you are today were it not for those challenging occurrences in your life that polished your spirit and refined your character?  There is no punishment in that, only reward.

In order to transform from the effects of negative memories, we need only be willing to see the brighter side of the occurrence even if it seems does not exist.  You may have to dig through the rubble of an emotional experience to find the diamond of truth within the experience.  And, when you find that diamond, that light over-shines the shadow of a difficult experience.  You see we are here to experience and our memories are stored in order that we may recall our experience.  However, it is unwise if we wish to behold health mental status to live in the darkness of our memories.  Our stories do not begin with our memories.  Our stories begin in a much bright place than just that of our experiences and memories of them.

These things require one thing that I write in nearly every article I’ve written, every book and every philosophical conversation.  That one thing is this – Changing your perspective is key to your happiness, growth and success in life.  Are you willing to allow this beautiful light to enter into your life right now?  May you  are and maybe you’re not quite yet and that is okay.  Just understand how this works.  That’s all you need.  May your God or Goddess bless you on your journey.

If I may be of service, I offer life coaching and spiritual counseling as well as a course on Discovering your Conscious Self.  Please do not hesitate to reach out to me if you need to.  Jaiehart@gmail.com.  You may also visit http://Ministryofconnectedconsciousness.org or http://www.jaiehart.com for information about my work.

 

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© 2015 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

The Nothingness

I’m listening to the wind rustle the leaves in the tree outside my window.  It’s a quiet day, a sleepy day and a slow moving day.  These are the best days to me.  It gives me time to pause, check out from my regular activities and simply reflect.  

 As the leaves begin to fall from the beautiful tree outside of my window, I too realize all of the things I am selectively intending to let fall away.  I set this intention with great conviction and determination.  I will not fail.  Although I do not fear failure, in fact, I often embrace it and laugh when it finds me for it simply means I’ve another lesson to learn.  But this, now this is different.

Long gone are the days of striving for perfection, striving to be at the top of anything and struggling for better or best in my endeavors.  I no longer seek these things because I have learned they do not matter.  These are the things of my ego.  I love my ego and it makes me laugh so hard sometimes with it’s urgings.  But, you see, I’ve learned to quiet it at times at least long enough to hear the voice of my soul and spirit and that voice speaks to me of things infinitely more important.

It is difficult to make the shift from busy to quiet some times.  But, it is a most worthy endeavor if you can master it.  In those quiet and still moments, the peace of nothingness can permeate your very being.  Why strive for nothingness you might ask?  Well, because it helps me maintain my positive perspective in life.  It helps me to move through my days with more authenticity, and it makes me aware of the things I have created from the ego.  I see them and I’m aware.  That is what the nothingness brings me, awareness.  That awareness is the greatest gift of my entire life.

It doesn’t change my work or my routine or any of the things that I do but it changes the way I approach things, it changes the way I think about the things that I do and it gives me the ability to show myself a gentle love and kindness along with compassion that I could not see without those still and quiet moments of nothingness.

These moments can be gained in meditation, out walking in nature as you let your every day thoughts fall away or even an intentional mindful walk in the middle of a bustling city.  You can reach into this silence, this stillness and into the nothingness where all creation begins.  I’m off then to enjoy the quiet stillness of the day and reach into the nothingness that is everything to me for the solace it brings me.  Blessings of great peace and joy to you all. 

 

© 2015 Jaie (Deva) Hart (photo/words)