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)

 

Shifting Focus and Entertaining Change

A silent morning spent sipping warm coffee and I find my mind wandering.  Days and weeks have had me thinking, wondering and worrying about way too many things.  I feel the change in season and very much love the fall but within me grows the need for more change, a deeper change as if a new direction is about to open up and I'm so very curious to see what that might be.  I need to change some things in my life as I've come to learn that some things no longer fit.  More accurately, I no long fit a framework that I, myself, have created.  The challenge or worry comes in that this one thing has kept everything so very consistent for so long and has assured me of a level of comfort.  The change feeling runs deep though and I know the only thing that I really have to do is just remain open and meet it graciously when it comes.

What does one do when they don't know what to do but the feel they must do?  I know the answer and my ego doesn't like it.  My ego wants to control and establish a security that doesn't exist except within its construct only.  Security is a funny thing.  How secure can a tiny life form be on a giant round rock spinning on it's axis somewhere around a thousand miles per hour while traveling through space around a little star at over 33,000 miles per hour in a much larger galaxy that is also in motion?  We are subject to anything and everything from biological, geologic and astronomical forces from a physical perspective.  If that were not worrisome enough, we have our own tiny microcosmic psychological matters to deal with as sentient beings.  I'm not writing this to scare or worry anyone really, just to point out a huge illusion that we all hold and the pointlessness of worry - even though I seem to have become a master of that particular negative activity at times.  Thankfully I look at those very moments as opportunities to realize fear is somewhere in my midst and its time to focus not on what is big and scary in this world but the lies I tell myself that generate unnecessary fears.

I watched a program on the Discovery Channel yesterday about an experiment conducted using random number generators and how at times of different significant events in the world, the randomness of the generators was affected by the morphic fields surrounding this Earth's inhabitants.  It made me realize how much I did not want to be an individual putting more negativity out there into the mix that everyone else must contend with.  I'm a sensitive soul who feels energy.  When tragedy occurs in the world, I feel it.  When beautiful things occur in this world, I feel it.  I realize at some level that I must be responsible, entirely, for what I put out there.  So, I come back to my local worrisome meanderings and realize they stem from my own ego's need to control a change I feel coming that cannot be controlled.  It's really ridiculous and humorous at the same time.  So, I stop the anxious thoughts for a moment and breathe in the peace and cool of this most beautiful fall morning.  We are always in a state of flux and change and no matter what happens, we go on whether physically and psychologically sound or, well, not.  It is what it is and what we think determines our experience.  I do not wish to have a negative experience in this life as that is not why I came here.  I wish to learn to relax a little better a times in my own skin and realize that everything in my play happens for a reason, a reason I wanted or a reason I needed (whether I liked it or not).

So, I shift my thought process as I sit here typing away to a completely different paradigm.  If I go over the facts of my own feelings that lie much deeper within at my core than mere random egotistical thoughts and ignorantly attached emotion.  Deepest within my knowing, I implicitly trust me.  I also know my own limits, strengths, challenges and opportunities.  I think rather than superficially feeling uneasy about seemingly impending change I will rest more peacefully knowing that it's my play and I will cast it and direct it and set the scenes up in a way that ultimately supports me quite positively.  I open myself trustingly to this change I feel is coming and the anxiety and uneasiness falls away.  It's not an easy process to trust....trust self or trust others, let alone trust in a plan you cannot easily recall.  Opportunity here in this place is endless.  We can seek the wisdom of opportunity rather than dispair over the perception of challenge experienced negatively.  It's all in our minds as is this entire experience of life anyway.  We're so amazingly powerful but we forget just how much so.

I think I shall sit back and breathe for a bit, take comfort in the void of nothingness, relax into curiosity rather than trepidation and learn to be a bit more present.  It's so hard sometimes but as I've often written, its worth the effort to work at it until you get it right, until you breathe in that one moment where you feel the energy within you rise in perfect harmony with all that is.  Those are precious moments and infinitely more rewarding than entertaining continually the bouts of discomfort and fear.  There is love to be had here and not the kind that can hold any definition of full and complete meaning in any dictionary or other book.  Love is the expansive energy that holds so much of what we experience together.  Trusting in that to bring about positive and necessary change in life is a beautiful experience.  I'm off to some silent contemplation of nothing for a short time.  I find comfort in the silence, peace in the stillness and love when I can silence the mind by letting the thoughts go one by one.  ~Blessings for a peaceful journey beautiful dreamers.  I pray you find your own spaces of curiosity over control, peace over worry and love over fear.

(c) 2013 Jaie Hart (photo copyright as noted on photo)