Taming Chaos - A Path of Thought and Integration

After years and years of intense experiences, deep and core reaching and teaching spiritual experiences, it has taken me a very long time to process and integrate.  Am I finished yet?  No, not by a long shot but I’m feeling my time of solitary contemplation is ending.  In a world that seems chaotic, punctuated by all that is negative in the media and the psychotic-seeming trolls that have permeated all of our on-line existence, it sometimes feels very pointless to speak a single word.  So, during such times, quiet solitude is necessary to begin to understand.  Will we ever? Honestly, although I’ve had some very serious doubts, I believe that we will.

The masses are purely frustrated and divided over things we all consider to be important but it is not really the dividing lines that are the real focus here.  We are being challenged to declare ourselves.  Just not in the way we might think at first.  I don’t know about you but if ever I find myself in wrong thinking, my body speaks to me.  It tells me, “wait a minute, you are going a bit too far – be silent and quiet – let the emotion settle and begin again in a better frame.”  I used to miss this important message time and time again until massive episodes of anxiety or depression would strike and painfully remind me.  So, I learned to be more silent and work through the feelings and fears of hopelessness in all I witness in life on planet Earth.  If I clear away the superficial thoughts and fears, I find something truly amazing.  It’s sometimes a very tiny gossamer thread of hope.  Just when I think there is no hope, I’ll see a sparkle out of the corner of my eye.  I may witness the true beauty of the nature of some humans so readily expressed that I cannot stay in a space of fear or of hopelessness.

While the media expounds on this atrocious thing or that heart-wrenching and mind numbing angry-toxic producing thing, they are getting the reaction they strive for.  I have decided to no longer give it.  I understand the stirring of baser emotion for the sake of stirring negative emotion.  It gets people into a very reactionary state and then the witch-hunts begin and the scape goats are strung up and strung out and then there is even more terrible news to broadcast.  But, but, listen – is that really the life we want to live -a life being manipulated by the media and those with a dark design?  How does that help you put food on your table, love those closest to you and strive always and ever to be better and brighter?  I can’t remember which book it was but Thich Nhat Hanh has said something to the effect of, “What are you feeding your head?”  When you are glued to the news channel late at night before bed.  Is it easy for you to fall asleep?  You get that concept, don’t you? If you turn to hope and what builds and better supports you in this life, can you sleep better and love better?

I don’t believe the world is any crazier today than it has always been here at the hands of fearful humans.  But, if that is all you focus on – that is all you will continue to perpetuate.  I now implicitly trust my inner guidance system.  Whenever I feel absolutely incredulous watching the news or being confronted by this human or that human I know there is a lie in the mix.  Either one I am being told or sold or one I am believing in.  Rather than waste my time and energy fighting back against the darkness of this reactionary manipulation employed unwittingly or unintentionally, I stop.  I pull myself back.  I calm gently my ego’s need to fight back, to be right, or to defend.  I pause and reflect to discover what part of my experience truly feeds my incredulousness and it doesn’t take long anymore to uncover the truth.  I then can move into the space of my heart, see more clearly and then simply hold a space of understanding.  Fighting back and defending is always an option but with so much time and energy poured into this negative manipulation of experience for ratings, for money or for God knows what else, it would seem to keep us all exhausted and vibrating so low, thick and desperate.  I don’t want that for myself and I don’t want that for others.  I also know that my only choice is to be the change that I want to see.  I need to focus on what lifts my own vibration.  I need to explore what better supports me and helps me operate more clearly as a conduit for balance in a seemingly crazy world.

We are all of us the darkness and the light in this world.  We can point our focus at any time and in any moment towards dark or light.  It’s not good or bad, right or wrong, it just is and you can argue these points from any angle for arguments’ sake.  You can troll me to the moon and yet, my inner guidance system will not waiver.  In that, I trust completely.  So, how have things been for me lately since this shift in thought, while integrating experience?  Peaceful.  I have found peace, I have found an inner well of unshakable love and support.  I have discovered in life where I “went wrong” so to speak but I’m not angry for it because it taught me so much.  I no longer need to learn from the obvious negativity in the world put forth by intentional or unwittingly participating humans expressing their own form of environmental psychology.  I can learn my life lessons by connecting with the Earth, appreciating the Sky, the Wind, the Clouds, the Birds, the Trees and every single blade of Grass.  Creation speaks often.  I now listen more closely and openly.

My intent and my focus of late is shifting my own energy and letting that vibrate out from my being, letting that be the wake I leave behind me as I place one foot in front of the other on this journey I call my life.  I’m living it my way and doing the best I can.  I’m turning off the news and disengaging from that which does not support me or those I love on my journey.  I’m doing what I can where and when I can to help change those things for the better where I see fit in a positive, non-violent and non-toxic way that does not infringe upon the free-will of others.  I’m making a commitment to myself and to all things I relate to – to strive to bring good, do not harm, and make a difference I can live with.  I can stand for something I find important without causing harm to another soul.  I have much hope that others in this world will rise up from this constant swirl of utter chaos and awaken and learn that they too can make a difference without imposing upon the free will of others.  I have hope. Find your hope and your faith.  Trust yourselves to find the best way.  May your God or Goddess or Nature or Life in General – bless you in every possible way with great wisdom, great compassion, great healing and great abundance.  I wish this for the entirety of this beautiful globe that is our home.  It is time.  And, So, It Is.

 

© 2019 (Photo/words) Jaie Hart

Integration

After a peak experience a few weeks back, life somehow feels quite different to me.  I wish I could put my finger on exactly what has changed or how but it’s too nebulous and wonderful for that. My thoughts this morning turn to one simple word that is not so simple at all, integration.  This dream we are living is more amazing than we realize.  My faithful readers won’t be shocked to hear me say “Life is amazing.”  I say it in just about every post and yes, it is a message I do try to impart through all my human interactions.  Peak experiences can be positive or negative depending on the emotions you choose to attach to them.  I’m certain you’ll never guess which view I hold between positive and negative.  I view all experiences as positive even when going through an experience might be particularly challenging for me in some way or in every way.  I guess I’ve realized along the path that has been my life that even though some parts of the road may seem stark, dark or painful and frightening, our experience is ever enriched by every single thing we go through.  Or thoughts about what we experience further shapes the sum total of the experience for us.

Through integration of an experience, we take in what is most meaningful to us and leave behind that which we have already learned or, well, have no further interest in learning.  I find myself in a time of integration.  The past several years of my life have been nearly indescribable in some ways.  If I wrote it all out right here and right now, I’m sure the things I’ve seen and experienced might seem quite outlandish at times, strange or even make me seem a bit, um, touched, I’ll say.  Touched is actually a very good word with many and varied implications.  Again, I’ll lean towards the positive realizing I have been deeply touched by people, visions, inspirations, nature and most important of all, love.  Maybe love is not so much categorized here in the typical sense or understanding of it.  It’s broader than that, much broader.  I could also add, all encompassing, weaving its way through every thought and vision as I went about some quite ordinary  and quite out of the ordinary seeming interactions within existence.

I have been on a very long pause, while trying to integrate all of the inputs and downloads that made their way into my psyche, my consciousness and my being.  Life is but a dream, the old childhood song goes and this is true.  But, this dream is very real based on my specific space-time orientation and I truly intend to make the absolute best of it.  I realized in my travels that I came to this place to learn and to better improve my own understanding of love in its myriad facets.  I can honestly say that I have learned so much and that I am so very grateful for this opportunity at this point in space-time to exist in the physical.  I look out into this world and I realize, just like the stars seem to shine individually with no seeming connection between them...the empty space in between is not so empty at all...just like the space between us here on Earth or elsewhere in the cosmos.  That empty space between us is not so empty and it is that thing or stuff that we cannot perceive that is the glue that connects us all.  It has nothing to do with our humanity or spirituality, it just is what it is – there...pulsing...moving...supporting and strengthening without being seen.   We just have no words or framework with which to define it.  Science begins to and Metaphysics does too.

With all these coffee-induced mental meanderings this morning and thoughts firing lightning speed in volumes and to spaces that are beyond my ability to follow each nuance an end...I am content just to be.  I’ve never before felt so ethereally and physically alive and comfortable within the confines of my own skin.  I take that as the gift of understanding that it is for me.  It’s been a long time coming.  There are many experiences you must integrate into your understanding to achieve the goals with which you set your own life plans.  Your experiences will repeat until the understanding dawns and your true understanding expands and the process just continues.  Rather than waiting for an event to feel the sentiment of achievement or satisfaction, do it now for the pure and beautiful act of living and appreciating this now.  There is no destination you suddenly get to and say, “See, there, I did it.”  None of us gets out of here alive.  At least not in the physical.  So, enjoy every breath and step on your journey and realize the gift that your life here in the physical is.  If you feel you lack love in your experience, know that you have the power to create it...the seeds have always been within you.  That spark of divinity with which you were so beautifully created gives you amazing power to enrich your own experience from inside of you and with trust and faith it will manifest without if and when you choose to make it so.

I wish you more than love and light as you journey through your lives, I wish you patience, openness of heart and mind for greater understanding too.  Know you are a beautiful miracle just as you sit there breathing and reading this little blog post of mine.  Peace be with you always and ever.

(c) 2013 Jaie Hart (photo is a fortunate random internet find - thanks google images!)