Seeing Clearly

I watched storm clouds roll in last night off the coast.  They were huge white clouds that appeared to be rolling and tumbling like waves onto the shore.  For a brief moment, I watched a large mushroom shaped cloud with tendrils hanging all the way to the ground.  I had never seen anything like it in my life and then suddenly it disappeared and reformed into a typical cloud right before my eyes.  I was immensely grateful since I was driving right into it.  It was a good feeling knowing the instability was calming as I was headed into that situation.  It reminded me of my life.  So often have I seen very tense and seemingly untenable situations on the horizon only to head right into it seeing that it’s not so bad and definitively NOT insurmountable.  I spent most of the rest of the late day and evening watching the clouds—winds of change carving and shaping clouds into miraculous pieces of temporary art.  It was quite beautiful.  When the sun finally dipped over the horizons, the sky was just absolutely amazing.  I wanted to head down to the coast but sadly, I was just too tired to make the trip.  It’s been a very long seeming couple of weeks with time barely seeming to move.  I think that when that happens, it’s time to pay attention.

The past year has flown by for me in a day and I had gotten used to it and suddenly, time slows down and I feel, hear and see things differently.  That has been part of my goal of late – to see things not as I ‘think’ they are but as they truly are.  I see the themes in my own life, the ones that repeat and I realize they repeat because I have not yet seen the truth.  The universe in its infinite wisdom brings me opportunity after opportunity to see the truth and so I go within to understand at a much deeper level why?  What is it that I have unconsciously created?  What is it that I fail to see time and time again?  These questions are a very good place to start.  However, rather than seek to beat myself up for those things I have unconsciously created in the past, I will shift my focus onto what I wish to consciously create…the real truth.  I think the only thing I can come back to and feel on solid ground about is that if nothing else, I can stand in my own light…not the shades others attempt to paint for me…but in my own light.  As much as I have unconsciously created in my world, others have also participated unconsciously creating and now that I look back, I see so much so very differently.  It brings me hope and comfort.  It is as if I meet myself in the light of truth for the very first time and now, now I can let go of the assumptions I have held as truth for far too long.  When you can stand in your own light, bravely…courageously…and completely unafraid to see the truth about you and use the love within you to see the truth about others, things, situations well…Well, it changes something within you.

I come back to my memory of the clouds again and see them perfectly formed.  I see the ragged lines joined to perfectly painted opalescent soft lines that expand and grow the moment I focus my attention on them.  I am reminded in the sky right in front of me a truth I have always known but misapplied many times.  What you focus on…the thoughts you hold inside of you about what you see—these are the seeds from which what you plant will grow and flourish.  It’s a beautiful design and so perfectly tuned to each soul as they dream and create within this larger dream we call life.  I stand under the same sky today and I see not a single cloud but the rays of the rising sun.  I am at peace and it is those thoughts I shall hold close and in clear focus today.  The truth is, I am the creator of everything in my world and I have designed everything perfectly and in just the way I most needed things to be.  Now, I understand.  As a new day dawns I find an interesting freedom that blows through my soul.  I stand in awe.  Blessings dear souls.  May you find the truth within you, be courageous enough to face you and find the strength always to stand in your own light! 

(c) 2012 Jaie Hart (photo is a beautiful random internet find)

Thoughts Seeking Purchase in the Truth

Long and restless night feeling my way to the stars through a thick blanket of fog.  For many moments I stared up into the gray wondering about this restless feeling that seems to have settled itself over my soul.  I have no answers or tendrils of clues to trace back to nebulous origins.  Sometimes I suppose these feeling just are what they are and not really anything to become overly focused on.  What we focus on we do most definitely create and more than anything in this world, I do not wish to create more of this.  Sometimes I think the soul must wrestle with its own perceptions and divining of the truth whatever that truth may be and in such times I think, perhaps, we merely hold on and go along for the ride and see where it takes us in mind and thought without giving too much weight to the feelings.  Feelings can be tricky.  Especially with thoughts firing off unbidden at lightning speed.  Sometimes mine move so fast and generate emotion while being entirely unnoticed by me until its too late and I’m stuck with the resulting emotion.  In time I think the thoughts will slow down, come back around like the Earth orbiting the sun and the moon orbiting the Earth.  It’s not really necessary to be so overly analytical that we must stop and think or trace each thought.

Sometimes we just have to be who we are and let the mind work as it works associating emotion as it chooses to associate emotion.  Sometimes just being very present with mind, heart, body and soul is all that is called for.  We must know definitively that nothing is really wrong at such times.  We are complex creatures with an ego, wounds and emotion that sometimes overtakes us.  Again, there is no need to get excited, I have learned the hard way.  It’s important at times that we learn how to just detach and observe the happenings in our own bodies and minds in the complete absence of judgment.  It is no easy thing because we are conversely trained to pinpoint and react to everyone and everything.  The point I make is that despite our unconscious training in this regard, it isn’t necessary to do anything but be.  

It’s overcast and the air is moist and has a tinge of chill in it.  Chilly for California is below 70.  I know, "Ya’all are a bunch a wimps out west," you might be thinking.  That may be but it’s all relative I suppose.  We know folks in other states who freak out in traffic but here in California we’ve become so accustomed to it.  Me, I don’t mind the traffic any more.  It is a reality I must contend with.  If I resist it, my feelings of anxiety and frustration will persist and only make the experience worse.  So, I arm myself with really good music and fully enjoy the opportunity to drive at whatever speed and listen to music that moves my soul in beautiful ways.  Everything, as I so often say, is truly a matter of perspective.  If you don’t like what you are seeing or experiencing and truly understand you have no power to externally change people and situations, you go deeper within armed with a very important piece of knowledge:  You always have the power to change how you perceive something, you can begin seeking deeper understanding and looking for the opportunity in an otherwise dismal seeming string of events.  What you focus on you create, as I said.  So, for me, I focus on silver linings whether I can see them or not.  By the very act of holding those thoughts, I will create it and I will understand.  Much like the situation I find myself in now.  If I hold the potential for an eventual positive outcome and clarity of vision for that which I now experience, it will come to me.  That—is a beautiful fact, one that I treasure.

Thanks for stopping by to read my mental meanderings.  I so appreciate your presence here in more ways than one and if anything I hope there is something here in any of my posts that might leave you with pause to reconsider thoughts, feelings and judgments.  Maybe, just maybe, something here might give you hope that you can push past the nebulous, push past the limits of negative thinking and reap the beautiful rewards of a new vision or a new more clear perspective. ~Brightest blessings of love, light and beautiful clarity of thought dear souls!

(c) 2012 Jaie Hart (photo, random internet find)

Comfortably Numb

We, as a people, are so epically under developed in terms of our senses.  Day in and day out our senses become numbed beyond comprehension by egotistical pursuits and pain and we are so unaware.  We don’t appropriately understand the need, I mean core-level need, to have about us all of our God-given faculties.  We pursue people, things, feelings – all outside of ourselves to feed the insatiable ego at the expense of the state of our souls.  We are not intrinsically bad in such endeavors, just unaware and the truth is that for every moment we remain unaware, we commit ourselves to this vicious cycle of same, same and same.  I don’t know about you but quite some time ago, that concept became so distasteful to me.  I was probably the leader of the pack in terms of pursuing those things that kept all of my senses, all of my hopes and all of my dreams in this thick, murky and nebulous comfortably numb state of total unawareness.  I’ll tell you what it brought me – years and years of blindness and pain to the truth of this world, the truth about life and most definitely, the truth about me.

Other cultures and societies on our own planet Earth learned to tap into these God-given senses and they were so often ridiculed, persecuted and judged by an ignorant and fearful majority that their great lessons are lost to antiquity.  Some of us strive so hard to recover the truths these other cultures have found.  For one who looks, even just a little, you will see the traces of this knowledge and understanding on every continent that now covers the Earth.  Yet, still, the ignorant and fearful majority ridicules, persecutes and judges those who pursue the truth.  It’s a sad state in reality.  I cannot judge them as bad for their actions because at heart I understand truly the nature of fear and how it has the capacity to warp and twist a mind, heart and soul.  In our own lack of faith and trust in what we can feel as the truth, we lock ourselves away in our own prisons of heinous thoughtless design.  There it is we stay until we become so spiritually toxic, so emotionally sick and so mentally frustrated that we begin to look within for some way out.

I cannot present a problem without a solution.  There are many solutions to be had in this world and so many can be found right inside the hearts of us.  There is more than one language for example.  We have the languages of literal written and spoken symbols used across the globe.  It is just as don Miguel Ruiz writes, these symbols are inadequate to fully express the truth about anything.  Until we can learn to feel the power of the strength and feelings within our bodies we will be unable to understand some of the things our limited symbols do not cover.  When speaking to a soul on planet Earth, if you listen only to the words they are speaking, you are missing volumes of very valuable and pertinent information that needs to be understood in order to truly hear what a person is really saying.  It’s only guesswork to try to read between the lines because your own egotistical wounds and filters will tell you only what it wants to perceive in order to make it better than the person speaking.  If we cannot learn to “feel” and I mean really “feel” what the other person is trying to tell us with all of our senses (mind, heart, body, soul and spirit), we will only ever learn bits and pieces of a lesson presenting itself and may miss a beautiful opportunity to participate in life.  We may also mistake what we think we are hearing if we get so hung up on the words and syntax alone.  There is more, so much more and you cannot read these separately and get the whole picture.  You must learn to take them in all at once.

So much on this Earth presented to us can be misread and misunderstood creating emotions, assuming the worst possible scenario driving us deeper behind our walls of fear.  These fears exploited by governments, politicians and the crafty egotistically wounded people can drive you into seeking numbness in order to exist and feel safe.  These designs force you into protective mode and perpetuate cycles of bare existence moving from one distraction to the next that continues to dull the senses further. 

Reconnect to the human race, the truth about who we really are and what we are capable of.  Forget about complacency and the seeming safety of known evils and ignoring what your senses are telling you.  Get quiet often and learn to feel your way through things, conversations and situations.  Everything is speaking all the time, as a dear soul to me so often says.  Its true.  A rock will speak to you.  A tree will speak to you.  Even a bird will speak to you.  Oh, not in the limited language of inadequate symbols but through the heart, through feeling and through the soul.  There are frequencies of information playing on low in the background, like a radio with the sound turned way down, all the time.  When we begin to listen for the sound, the feeling and the meaning, you will begin to hear the languages and through repeated listening, you will begin to feel and understand and awaken all of the senses you came to this Earth with.  Forget comfortably numb.  Don’t remain part of the problems of this world.  Step outside the comforts of complacency and learn how to listen.  Your life will become so much more rich, fascinating and ultimately joyful for you.

Rant over, I’m off to finish cooking dinner.  I love learning and learning to truly listen with all of my senses has been one of my life’s greatest discoveries and I am still learning.  I am just absolutely loving every single minute of it.   I hope you discover the beauty of learning and feeling along these lines too.  If you haven’t found that space yet, just set your intent, relax and open up to it.  With practice, it will come as will people to help you understand.  ~Brightest blessings dearest souls.

(c) 2012 Jaie Hart (photo, random but beautiful internet find)