Trading Illusions

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Just over half way through a rather difficult part of my journey, I realize that I have gained interesting new perspectives on things.  Not just on some things, but everything under the sun.  I think back over the days and years and notice how within my life I have traded the illusion for truth time after time and you might think that is frustrating and I can assure you it feels frustrating in the moment.  But, just one single deep breath and it doesn’t take but a moment to realize that trading illusions for refinements of truth is one of life’s beautiful blessings.

There are so many emotions we experience as we learn about our life and life in general.  We fight or otherwise resist them based on how we think we should be, feel or act in response to a certain experience.  In all honesty, this only serves to prevent our progress and stunts our growth immeasurably.  For if we are to grow at all, we must learn at least one of many important things about life during our time here and one of those is acceptance for starters.  That acceptance means accepting ourselves and how we feel or act or even react to situations, things or people.  We must be as we are and be okay with that.  We must learn to observe how we feel and how we act and watch with child-like curiosity and question it.  We must learn to be.

This is not easy by any stretch of the imagination but well worth the journey my friends.  Now as I sit here considering what I have come to learn from my life time so far, I realize all the things I used to beat myself up for was merely the act of trading illusion for little bits more of the truth I truly desire.  And I realized something else.  That desire for truth can be fulfilled only from the inside out and can never be had from the outside in.  Oh don’t get me wrong, there are many who point to the light and correctly so but until you know the light from within, you wouldn’t even know what to do with it.

So, I hope you struggle a bit here and there now and then.  It’ll give you character rather than do you any real and lasting harm.  I hope you encounter conflict on your journey.  It’ll help you sharpen your truest sense of authenticity.  I hope you encounter the haters, they naysayers and invalidators.  They’ll make you seek shelter deep within the heart of your being where the truth really lives about you and about life.  No, I do not wish you ill.  Please don’t misunderstand. What I wish is for you to find those tools that will enable you to truly refine your minds, your consciousness, your bodies, your spirits and souls.  It is not through easy sailing in a perfect wind that we truly learn sailing.  No, it is through navigating the stormy seas of life that we test ourselves and truly learn. 

Try, if you can, to muster the courage and strength to stand and face all that creates fear and worry within you.  Struggle to pull yourself up if you fall.  Talk to yourself lovingly and with compassion when you fail for even in failure you are refining everything that you are.  Every experience that we have here, dear ones, matters.  Maybe not for the reasons you think but for more important and less tangible ones.  It’s always like that, isn’t it?  The best comes after the hardest journey.  The fun part is we create all of this chaos just to relax within the order that follows.  The more chaos we create in our own minds, the more refinement we’ll have to work on.  And as we endeavor to engage in refining activities, we’ll be and do things differently as we go and the better off we’ll be at some point down the line or maybe right now as you recollect all you’ve faced.  Maybe the dominoes have already been lined up for you.  Well, knock’em down each and everyone and watch as each theme of your life is beautifully tied together in a way you will understand.  And you will understand.  And you will learn.  And you will grow.  Blessings of infinite understanding beautiful dreamers.

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© 2015 Jaie Hart (photo and words)

 

Mindful Healing Love

It is funny how quickly the ego can become engaged in reaction.  Believe me when I tell you I laugh at myself when I see my own triggered reactions.  Honestly, sometimes it takes a few moments of some serious talking to myself to get there but I always endeavor to get there so I can better understand what may be hiding in my own sub-conscious to work out pain wise.  It’s not an easy thing to do and it takes a fierce and fearless courage to do it but every one can if they are willing.

We are triggered into reaction for very good reason but I’ve learned something of late.  Perhaps it was something I always knew and used at least sometimes without thinking about it.  The simple act of refocusing on breathing and becoming extraordinarily mindful and quiet in a moment of challenge can return you quickly to a logical and calm place instead of a reacting, irrational and emotionally out of control place.

Are you one of those who always feels they can only think of something good to say after an argumentative encounter is over?  Well then, mindfulness breathing may be just the perfect thing for you.  You do not have to react or even answer forcefully expressed questions on the spot until you are good and ready to.  I would say that in an emotional and reactional frame, you are more likely to say something you didn’t mean undermining your own serenity in the process.  Giving yourself time to get straight concerning your own projections, expectations and emotions through the simple act of breathing can do much in terms of restoring your own equilibrium.  Then you can respond when necessary to address conflict with compassion and the fullness of your heart.  When you can find a way to let the heart lead the way, there is no remorse or regret to follow thus complicating already triggered emotions.

You see, we all either project or vomit our psychology onto everyone we meet.  It may be positive or it may be negative and that depends solely on you and what you are willing to become fully aware of from the inside out.  So, if you have become tired of a life of continual conflict, go within and start asking yourselves why you might have created a situation.  You do not have to ever become a victim of your creations.  Just stop and consider what they may be trying to teach you.  Good things like maybe you are good enough, smart enough and loving enough to be and exist in this world.  Just some food for thought as we ready for the new year beautiful dreamers.  

© 2015 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

 

You hold great powers within you for healing and transformation without doing ever a single thing but going within and reflecting by asking yourself some questions.  Be unafraid of the answers.  Be prepared to see them, to own them and to overcome them with healing love.  All it takes is your intent and consent.  How cool is that?

Reflecting

Oh this season of change never ceases to amaze me.  Every day a new surprise to contend with whether a lesson in greater love or something on my path that challenges my ego to the point where I am unsure whether I’m laughing at myself or crying.  Ultimately, my senses come to me and I laugh out loud sometimes at how my own ego becomes insulted over this thing or that thing.  But I noticed something else.  Today more than ever I am curious to my very core.  I am curious about every single reaction I have to what I face and I am absolutely fearless to look at the darkness within me that keeps me attached to things that bring more challenge.  My spiritual ego towards self-understanding life lessons is very big.  I understand this. I'm okay with this.

These experiences I have chosen to have in this life are stunning.  You would not believe it if I told you about all of the things in my life that I have unconsciously created and no doubt there will be a bit of that continuing.  However, I now have the tools that will give me pause to consider all of that which I feel I must react to.  That core level reaction becomes the trigger not  just for some half-baked ignorant action and its resulting emotion these days.  There is that but there is also this trigger to delve much deeper into self reflection which I know must follow.  It has become as strong in me as the need to react because now I know these reactions come from my own attachment to things, situations or themes.

I do not beat myself up any longer for attachment to themes because they represent my path which is only those experiences I created for learning.  Only now, consciously, I realize I wish to create differently because I wish to learn differently but caution is needed because even that is an attachment.  If I really give it thought from a much deeper place, a place of no thought, I know, I see and I understand that its time to simply just be, to allow and to accept relinquishing all of my illusions of control.  There is no controlling anything.  There is action in this world and reaction, cause and effect.  But if you change the cause; you change the effect.

To my very cells and bones do I reset yet again my intent to allow all that came before me to be and to heal as I breathe deeply into this moment simply following the breath in the present where I now dwell.  This is the place I have longed to be regardless of the pull my ego has on me and the pulls I heed for some experience or another.  I just notice them, seek understanding and reflect with more of a peaceful allowance than ever before.

These tools I speak of are not simple and yet they are not difficult either. Complex in nature and multi-layered they are and I’m talking about yoga and mindfulness.  Two simple things.  Yoga means union.  Mindfulness as I use it means awareness of thought and action without judgement.  Practicing these things I learn to see differently, to feel differently and to love more gently - self and others as I experience life.  Do I stumble and fall still?  Do I fail still?  Do I screw things up at times? Sure I do.  Every single day and it makes me laugh all the harder.   It doesn’t matter that we fall or fail.  What matters is what we choose to do next.  The revelations wait for your readiness to receive.  When you open your heart fully to the Universe and its infinite wisdom, the amazing things that pour into your consciousness is just delicious and beautiful…that precious peace between sounds and that wonderful stillness between action and steps is so full with a vast expanse of everything-ness of which we are all part.  

Maybe I talk nonsense.  Sometimes I do.  But today I feel wonderful, expanded, curious, open and so very willing to learn the ways of this world, the ways of my own soul and the ways of compassion - Sat Naam!  This – this I have waited a life-time for.  Blessings for your journey beautiful dreamers.  May you find all that you hoped and dreamed for

© 2015 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

 

Soar My Angel

I remember the day, so many years ago, a tiny beautiful child with bright blue green eyes and an angelic smile that always lit up an entire room.  She was my whole world at the time.  Everything she did was my precious moment of joy.  She looked at me with a beautiful smile that one day so very long ago and she said, “Mommy, you know what?  I’m going to stay with you forever and ever,” as she threw her arms around me and hugged me so tightly and said “I love you so much.  Even when I get married I won’t leave you, I’ll just stay right here with you.”  Inside I laughed at the sentiment and I felt the heart tug and the tears came to my eyes.  How blessed am I to have a daughter, I thought.  My beautiful, sweet daughter.

Time went by so fast from that moment.  I swear I only blinked and 22 years passed us by.  I had more little birdies join the nest and was so grateful to receive a son and two more daughters.  The nest was full of love no matter what we went through and we went through a lot.  One birdie flew the nest very early, my son.  He moved in with his dad across country because he missed him.  I expected my oldest daughter would be the first to go but she didn’t.  She stayed and I loved her and watched her grow then from a teen to a young adult and then to a full-fledged adult woman of strength and character.

She worked, had her hobbies, her friends and her love of cup cakes grew into a very creative talent for making them and we all delighted in her experiments.  Today I write with a sad and glad heart for it is today that another birdie will spread her newly found wings and fly off into the big wild world.  I’m so proud of her.  I’m so proud of the woman that she has become.  I’m so grateful to have her in my life.  I don’t know if she knows how much she has and will always mean to me, so I’m writing this blog post and dedicating it to her.  She’ll always be my little birdie but when I look at her now, so beautiful, so strong, so resourceful, wow – just wow am I so proud of her.

My wish for her flight is that she explore everything in her world, that she never ever be afraid, that she face everything with courage and that she tests her wings to the fullest extent possible and soar and I mean really soar.  She has it in her to fly to such great heights.  I want her to know love in all of its facets; I want her to understand the world as much as she can so she isn’t surprised by its twists and turns, even the uncomfortable and painful ones.  I want her to know she can rely on the core of her being first and foremost to pull her through and to all she must face in her life.  I want her to enjoy her life and know above all else that she is so very loved.  I will always be there for her.

Safe flight my sweet angel girl, now woman, as you make your way into the big wild and wonderful world.  I know that you will do great things always.  I love you.

Photo:  Unknown random but fortunate internet find

Ethereal Consciousness

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I thought I knew who and what I was
Until for a moment I wasn’t
I thought I knew where and when I existed
Until a moment I didn’t

I cannot suppose what my senses perceive
Is the ultimate and definitive truth of anything
For in one single moment was I shown
All that I thought I knew
Was merely a belief or a projection
A projection that could stop projecting

I am not who I thought I was
I am not what I thought I was
I am not always where I think I am
I don’t always exist as I think that I do

When I throw my senses away
When I throw my perceptions away
When I throw my beliefs away
When I throw my thoughts away

What am I other than, I am?
For if I can observe, I must at least exist
There is one thing and one thing only that comes to me now,
I am Ethereal Consciousness

For in Ethereal Consciousness belief isn’t necessary
And location is not required
A vehicle and time can both be rendered meaningless
As can be the senses and their related perceptions

Without accepting a paradigm of provisional truths
When everything I think I know
Is willfully given up in my thoughts
I still am

Therefore, I am
And so, I exist
I am Ethereal Consciousness
Even when I think I am not

Source:

Harter, J.L., Awakening from the Dream, 2014 The Ministry of Connected Consciousness, CA Print

Personal Declaration of Independence

Aghast at finding yet another button someone could push within me, I sat down angry as much from the recent exchanges as the fact that a button exists to push.  It’s an unconscious one, the button, but if I tear it apart it is about being wrongly accused.  Why would I fear being wrongly accused when today I really don’t care what others think of me because I know nothing they say can define me.  So why react as if they do?  Why does this button really mean anything in the present?  It doesn’t even though I unconsciously reacted and fiercely defended.  It’s a memory that is reacting and not me in the present.  Sigh.

One thing I think I’m fairly done with is social media and worrying about what people think.  There is a growing Jaie Hart non-fan club. What I have to say to them is this: “What you think of me is none of my business.”  I watched the Dalai Lama sit tall in his seat on his 70th birthday and talk about how people call him evil and he made little pointy horn motions with his fingers and in a funny voice said “oh, I’m such a devil.”  That is kind of how I feel right now.  My whole life I have been kind and considerate, even compassionate towards those who were insulting, derogatory and just doing their best to try to step all over me while calling me names whether intentionally or through implication.  You know what?  I’m done.  No more. 

Look, everyone has the right to their opinions, their actions and their words.  Some how the governor has come off my voice and I intend to use it as I see fit.  If I’m evil for being honest and authentic, let someone hold that thought of me if they’d like.  There are more than 10 times that amount who would disagree and more importantly, I disagree and answer to a higher authority - me.

So, I discovered today the source of a button and I am infinitely grateful to the person who brought that button to my attention because now I can finally heal it.  I won’t change using my voice now that I have really found it and I will continue to speak my mind but I will never consent to creating “buttons” within me that people can push.  It’s just not going to happen.

So, there is hope for those of us who have our buttons pushed or when people find out where our goats are tied up.  We can get very brave and courageous and go looking for the source of our own agony, the true source and not the superficial one.  If we can take back our power and go do this one thing, we can be free.  Really free.  Today I declare my own personal independence day.  I’m free from the act of giving others power over me…I am free of giving anyone else’s opinion of me more credence than my own and I am free to speak my truth with integrity, compassion and authenticity and will forgive myself if I get mad about it.  I am only human and that’s okay.  I will also be more forgiving of others for doing the only thing they know how to do.  I resolve to never carry anger and endeavor to carry only peace, love and understanding.  I may fail as I go and that's okay.  I'll just get up and try again.  That's the beauty of life, right?

© 2015 Jaie Hart (photo:  Unknown but beautiful random internet find)

 

Understanding Invisible Wounds

There are times in our lives we suffer a blow of some kind.  Something unexpected, something huge, something big and something totally invisible to the outside world.  No one understands the pain because they can’t clearly see it.  Because they cannot see it, they expect you to perform normally, behave as if everything is fine and that all is well in your world. They cannot understand what you are going through.

Sometimes we have to speak up, we have to tell people very private things we’d prefer no one know so that the invisible becomes visible and we can gain some compassion and understanding for the invisible burden that we carry.  In a way, we all carry an invisible burden of some sort.  I too carry one and although I’m not entirely comfortable sharing it in this blog, it is one I will carry for sometime.  It causes fatigue unimaginable, it causes pain and discomfort but you wouldn’t see it from the outside.  But it is here on the inside.

I write this not so much for myself as I feel courageous, I have conviction and a fierce voice able to be used to protect myself as need be.  But, not everyone has that.  Watch for the signs and listen to people.  They may be politely telling you something very private when they tell you they cannot do something, they cannot celebrate, go out and have fun with you, help you move, help you do this or that because they’ve got their own private battle going on that may be temporary or permanent.  Don't force people to be as you think they should be.  That's not fair, it's not right and it is completely selfish of you to do so.

I know all too well about invisible broken legs having many family members suffer something similar.  My heart goes out to their struggles and to all who struggle with the invisible pain they carry.  My message to them too – be gentle with yourselves even if no one else will, even when everyone expects too much from you, and even when everyone expects you to act like a normal human being.  Sometimes we are not normal or cannot function normally for various reasons and that is okay. What is not okay is other’s judgment of things they do not understand so make them understand and you can do that without full disclosure if that is your preference.

You’ve been given a voice.  Use it to protect and preserve you because you matter so much.  Do what you can do for you every day.  Be unafraid.  Be as strong as you can be and then rest if you must, retreat if you must and be quiet if you want to.  Those who stand by you are your people.  Hold them close and love them.  Those who won’t stand by and support you, love them and let them go (sometimes this just means hold no more expectations of support so you are no longer hurt by them unnecessarily).

Life is hard sometimes.  But we can get through our invisible wounds or not.  The main point is that you deserve support, understanding and compassion for what you go through.  If you cannot get it from those around you, please give it to yourself.  Take what you need to be okay in terms of time for yourself for healing, solitude if need be and rest when you need to.  This life is like your ship.  You are the captain, not anyone else.  May your God or Goddess keep you, bless you and fill you with all the healing strength you can hold.

  ©2015 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

 

Pure Consciousness

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Many a philosopher or those with a pioneering spirit from many other disciplines might argue about the concept of what precisely consciousness is.  From each of their individual perspectives and disciplines they may all be right, they might be right or they may be all wrong.  To define a bit:

The dictionary meaning of the word consciousness extends through several centuries and associated cognate meanings which have ranged from formal definitions to somewhat more skeptical definitions. One formal definition indicating the range of these cognate meanings is given in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary stating that consciousness is: “(1) a. awareness or perception of an inward psychological or spiritual fact: intuitively perceived knowledge of something in one’s inner self. B. inward awareness of an external object, state, or fact. C: concerned awareness: INTEREST, CONCERN – often used with an attributive noun. (2): the state or activity that is characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, or thought: mind in the broadest possible sense: something in nature that is distinguished from the physical. (3): the totality in psychology of sensations, perceptions, ideas, attitudes and feelings of which an individual or a group is aware at any given time or within a particular time span – compare STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS.”

Spend any time researching the topic of consciousness and pretty soon you’ll find yourself half mad with theories, hypotheses and words like qualia and awareness and many philosophical ideas of what consciousness truly means from so many different angles.  Hundreds of papers have been written on consciousness and still we are no closer to pure understanding but maybe pure is part of something we might need to branch off into and along with "pure" add consciousness and create a new term to explore.  

What is pure consciousness?  Well, it is that state where you experience not one single thing else but consciousness.  There are no thoughts, no sensations, no input no matter what the mind throws up, you let it slip away as rain down the side of a mountain.  Pure consciousness is like a mountain and something far beyond it as it has no limits or boundaries or definition at all.  From a state of pure consciousness, none of this matters, has bearing on or impacts pure consciousness in the slightest. 

Unless you have experienced this state it is a little hard to explain other than as I have.  The only way I know of to get to a state of pure consciousness is through the practice of meditation and it takes much discipline and practice to get to that state of pure consciousness.  To be honest, I first experienced it during an NDE (Near Death Experience - story for another time).  Knowing what it feels like, I took up meditation again out of curiosity and a desire to explore an experience and it took so many years to see it again, I don’t even want to tell you.  But you can learn to get to it.  The question I ask is, even if you get there and even if you find it and become "enlightened" at the finding of it...“And, so?”

Why would we expend so much effort to project ourselves into a physical existence if all we want to do when we get here is spend all of our time in meditation to make this world disappear?  Didn’t we want to be here in the physical for a reason?  So why not then see it through and learn why it has the parameters it does.  Aren’t you at least a little curious why or how you come to be here? There must be a reason and I think that it must be your reason alone. I don’t wish to know the meaning of life right now.  I’m focused instead on the concept simply stated as I am.  I can’t tell you what it’s for but it relates to a focus on consciousness.  I can point you to a teacher if you are curious (just let me know).  What I teach is part of consciousness but focused more on the day to day stuff but this topic is never ending and all consuming if you let it be that.

We are consciousness.  We are part of the great unknown…The All of Everything...The Great Mind...the Source…God….Goddess – choose your term but focus as you do on the feeling when you contemplate consciousness and say I Am.  I Am is complete all by itself.  It needs nothing else but I resist it.  I resist it and yet I experience it every night in meditation…a vast nothingness of pure void, black, dark, beautiful, peaceful and wonderful.  It’s funny having experienced a concept and then rejecting it on another hand but only in a way and maybe it is just semantics and there is no resistance at all but instead an alternative angle of understanding present that will morph into some other understanding that might entertain my psyche for a bit.  It doesn’t matter, none of this matters. Being everywhere and nowhere and understanding what that means in terms of consciousness – now that is priceless.

This may make no sense from the outside looking in.  But if you cut off the outside entirely, breathe slowly and deeply, let your thoughts slide away like rain down the side of a mountain, you might understand what I mean.  In the stillness and quiet we taste a bit of who and what we are.  What does that matter?  I don’t know that it does other than to help you understand that you are more than meat suit, bones, brain and a bundle of nerves.  You are that too but so much more.  Add emotion and you have the perfect storm of wonder that humanity is.  It’s truly beautiful.  You are truly beautiful.  Our consciousness from whatever angle for whatever purpose we design is amazing regardless of who is right, wrong or somewhere in between.

Source:

Definition: http://www.Wikepedia, Online