Silently Yearning for Illness
So we move along into this world, wrapped up in layers, some weighing us down, others lifting us up and in the end, keeping us always in the same place, where we began. It's what this life seems to do, it seems that it is designed to keep us in the same place, to spend our life walking on circular escalators. It's like an invisible and very expansive jail. The illusion is thick and its hard to cut loose because we have reinforced this circular motion for so many lifetimes. We want to escape, break free but the momentum is too strong. Pause. Even in the pause there is movement. We pause to breathe but the peace is short lived.
The mind circles within because we have embodied the cycle of the collective. We sit, we spin. We stand, we spin. We walk and we spin. Waiting for illness. Because it is severe illness that is the blessing that we secretly wait for, it is the only excuse accepted by others and our minds. Illness is the excuse for stillness that we happily embrace on the inside. But not everyone escapes this forced stillness, it becomes permanent and we move from stillness to decay. Inhabitable within our bodies and within this world.
Extremes. We have become a species of extremes. There must be another way. This can't be the design that was intended. I hope that this is just the temporary collective darkness, needed for our evolution into the next vibration and that the light is not too far away. Light at the end of the tunnel. Fuck, I hope so. I pray so. For you, for me and for all beings. Because shit is so dark we can no longer see.
Searching for a light switch.
The Collective Trial
If we were to take all religions and view them as a single human, each of these being's would be sentenced to life. To dissolve the macro into the micro it makes it easier to understand what steps need to be taken, but we live only in the largeness of it and don't make the turns and changes in direction that are required. The first thing that needs to be understood and acted upon is the marriage of religion and politics. It is incestuous for the two of them to be wedded but here we are. Until we begin the process of untangling this relationship and separating, we will have a difficult time seeing clearly the mess in which we collectively live in.
The religions of the world must be on trial and they are in this moment, they have a responsibility, or had a responsibility and they failed when they said yes to politics. They sold themselves to the highest bidder. But there is a way to untangle this and it will not come from those who hold the keys to the macro. It will come from you and me. Until we untangle it, all the activism and protests will make small changes. It's time to understand and locate the root, the depths where the seeds of darkness and betrayal have been planted.
It's not about condemning religion. This is another version of extremism and this version only feeds the other side and we get into the same cyclical battle of the egos. I'll give myself as an example. I'm 45. Up to the age of 25 I was constantly programmed to be a particular way. At the age of 25 I began to wake up and started the deprogramming process which took a long time and here I am now. The irony is, by removing the beliefs and structures that formed around and within me, speaking from a religious and spiritual perspective because there are of course many other beliefs and structures that have also been planted, some that I'm likely still living unconsciously. I was able to reach a place of emptiness and connect more deeply within not just my self, but also more deeply to the supreme, call it God, Allah, the Divine, the Universe...whatever suits you best. I am more connected and spiritual today with much less.
We are sold to walk the path of God and this simple teaching is the shackles that the higher powers wrap our minds with, but the truth is this, the path in which we are here to walk is the path of our soul and only when we walk the path of our soul can we truly connect to God, to the divine. By simply following the masses, by obeying and living the illusion of one path, we not only destroy ourselves and waste this precious life, we risk destroying the collective. The greatest and most powerful form of activism is to walk the path of your soul. To unravel the shackles that your mind is wrapped up in, loosens the shackles for the collective. The power that others have over the masses will no longer be able to hold.
First World Illusion
Being here the last two days in Vancouver and witnessing the homeless and the addicted, seeing my brothers and sisters sticking a needle in their arms and some even sitting there frozen in time as the needle dangles, held on by their own veins. It's hard to watch, but necessary.
Why are we here? Why is it that this prosperous country can't take care of everyone. This is what a first world country looks like? Too me it seems we have set the bar too low.
How did you get here? What brought you to this place. You were born into this world, a soul in a body. I wonder if your soul is still with you or are you simply an empty shell now, your body unable to hold on to the essence, to your own spirit or is your spirit stuck inside, reincarnated into this body to pay for past mistakes?
Is this hell? Are you swimming in the fire, the content of that needle igniting the flames? I don't know, but I can't help but be sent down the rabbit whole of wonder. I want to sit beside you, spend time with you all, but I do have fear. Whats the fear? Why do I fear you? Will you harm me? Truly, will you harm me?
Feminine Flow
As I sit here in the kitchen at our new place in Nanaimo,
I'm beginning to release worry and need for control, this is an old programming that lives inside me, needing to care for everything, to control and worry. Control is masked as caring, but caring is too trust in the Divine, to have faith, to know that you control nothing and nobody. Control only brings misery, it stagnates the flow of energy.
Energy is free flowing like the melting snow caps that transition into water, to rivers and water falls providing life to the nature we see and experience around us. To control is to permanently stuff life into a freezer but life is ever flowing, ever changing.
Gratitude and presence in every moment, including this one. See how she moves and flows and adapts. See her truth in the universe, see and feel how excited she is and pause in this moment. PAUSE. Because this moment is all written. You have dreamed about this. You have seen and felt this path.
The feminine cannot be frozen, stagnant. She is a force of energy to be loved and respected. Just like you can't stop the waves of the ocean or control the high or low tides, similarly you have no control over the feminine and her waves, you can only adapt to her nature, moment to moment. May the feminine forever be free, may she be the high and the low tide as she pleases.
This woman is teaching you by simply being. You need to simply observe and feel her, feel her heart and the energy that she fills this space with. How blessed you are in this moment, the moment before this and the moments that are to come tomorrow and beyond.
As to where not to spend your energy, tiny attempts, even a thought of suppressing the feminine will toxify this union. She is fire and fire needs air, fire needs to breath to shine.
The Negotiable Path
Is it negotiable? A question that some ask without really understanding that everything is negotiable. Especially in todays time. Even the toughest ones like bank fees and mortgages are negotiable which brings me to the question, why does everyone want to own houses, property so badly? Why do we own things, so many things when in a short while we are leaving, our departure around the corner? We came to here to do something, there was a particular purpose and the more we own, the less we can see and remember why in the hell we came here in the first place.
Not that there is anything wrong with owning its just that a lot of the times the calculation doesn't makes sense, not financially, energetically or spiritually. Perhaps we don't consider the impact on all three and thats why we make decisions? Ok, let's take out the energetics and the soul from the purchasing of a home, let's just look at it financially? Ramit Sethi touches on this a lot and he is right, if you truly calculate the difference between owning and renting in a market like New York and now Toronto, it doesn't make sense. Now, if you are purchasing a home because in 25 years you would like to own it, retire in it, want a peace of mind, no landlord. Yeah, I totally get it. Have a few properties if you have the means to buy and rent out, yeah, that makes sense too. But if getting a house, a mortgage leads to being house poor? Prevents you from fulfilling the energetic and spiritual purpose, I'm not certain the risk is worth it.
I am thinking about this because everyone is talking about a bubble. There is a bubble coming. Sure, that is likely when you have people stretching themselves because the interest rate is so low or nothing at all, but do we ask ourselves why? Ok, interest rate is low, is that all it takes too strap ourselves to a structure? What are we giving up when we are giving in? Is there another way that leads to a more balanced life? Are there desires in you that you are holding off to survive within the existing ecosystem of society? All I am pondering here, is there another way? Is there a more balanced way of living in this life? Have we chosen this or has this current way of flowing, the speed, the bumps, has this path been curated for us without our input and all we are doing is trekking along because the idea of suggesting a counter way, pointing in another direction and asking, what about that path leads to backlash from others who they themselves aren't aware around the why of there actions.
When we aren't aware, when we don't have access to the buried truth within us, but the question, when asked, has a way of weaving its way into the depths of our being and it pulls the trigger which leads to a reaction. That reaction is unique to each individual and is dependent on how much their existence resides within the darkness and how much in the light. It is dependent on the depth of ones self-awareness.
So is everything negotiable? Yes, everything in life is negotiable, including the path that has been laid before us.
Dripping Unconsciously Over Humanity
Love. What is love? Such a question seems cliche. Another session about love but can there ever been too many sessions about love? Too many words to describe its meaning? If anything, in todays time there is not enough to balance out its opposites so then perhaps we need to continue exploring this continent that is yet to be rediscovered. Where did we lose our way? When did we forget? Why did we forget? What will it take for us to remember?
Perhaps it is difficult to speak about love because the greatest of telescopes are unable to catch sight as it has become unrecognizable. So, where do we go from here? Beyond the romance portrayal from our dear friends Hollywood and Bollywood. They are mere reminders, illusions to remind us of how lost we are. We consume and consume and consume the stories of fiction in order to get a tiny glimpse of it again, a touch of emotion from another lands like a tear drop within our ocean, sending its vibrations within our being for a particle of a moment. Then she passes, the moment has moved to the next, we gather ourselves and forget once again. Back to reality or is this the illusion?
The talk of love is not what it should be. It should not be talk at all, it should be an action. An action to balance out the action of its opposite. An opposite that I no longer want to name as to name it feeds the energy into it and in our feeble attempt to weaken it, it becomes stronger. The mere mention of its name, regardless of the mouth from which the words drop, the energy reverberates, activating all the cells within its body. Our mention of its name are like nutrients for its dark soul. This is how it works. Attention results in intention. Attention creates intention, even if its not the intended desire.
What am I speaking about? We may say how we love our mothers, our sisters, but when we speak of another, that is not related, we change our tone and tap into an alternative dictionary to describe her but we don’t understand that suppressing her, speaking of her with such words is to speak to the mother and sister we claim to love and respect so much. Words. Waste. A complete waste of words, dripping unconsciously all over our humanity, we may as well bathe ourselves in the oil that soaks up our oceans.
One cannot understand. I speak no words. Ah, but what about your thoughts? Thoughts are ours, it impacts no one but I. This, another illusion created by someone, something, an unknown force. Our thoughts come from our sub-conscious and our sub-conscious arises from the unconscious and the unconscious, well, via the sub-conscious feeds the conscious. That is whole. Your thoughts feed the collective and the collective thoughts feed you. So what is the answer in which we see? That is found in the act of becoming conscious of the unconscious.
Well, we end up right back where we started. Hmmm, not much where we started, more where we have ended up. The present, this is the starting point. You want to get to the finish line but it is an impossibility because we have forgotten where we have begun. To love, is to return. Simplicity, it is what has become and perhaps always been most complex to the mind of humanity.
Love.
The Rivers of Racism
The rivers of racism run long, wide and deep. Last week is a manifestation into physical what is etched deeply into mans psyche. We want to help, to share our voice, to make a difference, but why? Because fortunately a crime, an injustice was caught on tape and in the physical realm a man lost his life for nothing, killed by another man for his deep hatred for another because of the colour of his skin. What we witnessed is the suffocation of a black man in physical form but why is this hurt, this outrage being expressed now? Was the week before, six months before, a year before any different? This is what happened to be caught on camera. One does not have to be in the United State for too long or search to far to witness and feel the depths of racism that runs deep within the American psyche.
Every day black women and men die but its not just about a knee on a man till he breathes his last breath, it is the knee on mans spirit every single day. Every single day the spirit of black women, men and children is crushed, it's strangled, suffocated. Correction. There is an attempt to crush the spirit of black women, men and children. An important distinction. Where are our cries for the infinite attempts to murder their spirit? In a few weeks, a few months, a year, most of us will return to our primary focus. What will we order on Uber eats, what will we watch on Netflix, talking sports and intoxicating our mind with food, drugs and drinks, with religion and rituals that in the end change fucking nothing. We consume whatever we can to make us feel good and comfortable. To truly be a part of a cause, of a movement, is to engage and begin difficult dialogue to enter the depths of darkness of another and of the darkness that lives within ourselves every single day. It is not forever, but it is needed now, in this moment and the many moments to come until we get to the other side.
The collective human mind is ill and all the protests and movement shed light but they alone will not result in lasting change. It is consistent engagement with those who are seemingly different from you. It is active engagement with humans who did not grow up the same way as you did. If you are homophobic, engage with the LGBTQ community. If you are sexist, speak to the women in your life and be open and honest about how you see and feel about women. If you are racist against black people, explore your own limits and engage within their community. Learn by asking questions and listening. Why? Because it moves you beyond the physical and into a deeper exploration of the minds of others and your own mind. We begin to challenge our own beliefs, our own upbringing and start moving past our deeply ingrained limits of the mind and learn about others who our parents, cultures, religions and societies encouraged and programmed us to stay away from for an infinite amount of inappropriate reasons.
We will learn that all of our struggles, all of our joys are the same. We all in the end are striving for the same thing and that is a deeper connection with others, a deeper connection with the individual and collective heart, spirit and mind, to move beyond the colour of the skin, to belong and experience equality. When we have the courage to go deeper within the darkness of humanity, to live in it, then only can we understand. Black women and men whose spirit has been suffocated for hundreds of years, they won’t so easily let others in. Its like your friend or family member who is struggling, perhaps in the darkness of depression, perhaps they have experienced violence and suppression growing up, its hard to help them, they won’t easily let you in because they feel betrayed and heavy and don’t trust others, it’s experiencing a feeling of deep betrayal that is not easily healed and so we need to see what is the best way to show up for all those in this world who are struggling. What we can’t do is nothing and we also can’t fill ourselves with shame and guilt because that doesn’t translate into the evolution of humanity that we need today. We are repeating over and over and over the same fucking shit and pumping oil down the same rusty old pipelines and wondering why clean water is not coming out the other side.
What is the root? It is no longer changing what is going down the pipeline, it is changing the pipes themselves. We have an opportunity to reset our lives, those of us who are living in comfort, have an opportunity and it begins with engagement. Think about your daily conversations, think about how many times someone will say, I don’t want to talk about it because its too heavy of a topic, lets talk about something lighter. Something fucking lighter?! You want lightness when the world is being engulfed in darkness? To be light is to swim in the darkness, purify it with spirit and then come out the other side. It is not easy to reprogram the mind, but we need to start. Now. The more you ignore the darkness of humanity, the less chance we will ever experience the light of humanity to its fullest.
Today, despite all of our technological advances, medical advances, despite all of our education and access to endless information, humans are still in the same if not a worse state of existence. People are still starving in the world, people are dying from diseases despite the availability of medication, women are still being trafficked, abused and having to fight for equal rights, wars are still happening all over the world, millions are living in refugee camps because of the wars fuelled by the west thanks to the weapons we provide, the earth is literally burning and being destroyed at its root and black people are experiencing racism from all fucking directions, not just white people. Yet, we so easily point our finger away from us and say, THEY are raping women, THEY are causing the wars, THEY are ruining the planet, THEY are racist, its always THEY and not us. THEY killed George Floyd.
No. WE killed George Floyd.
Beyond the Noisy Skyscrapers
Do not doubt this power. I chose a card this morning after my meditation from the Wild Unknown. I asked her to tell me something about love and it showed me the ten of cups, colourful lights and energy radiating out of each one, filling each other. This is the energy others are feeling off you and its magnetic. The part that got me was the last sentence. Do not doubt this power.
I doubt my strengths, my powers as so many do. It’s odd that it has become so challenging to acknowledge our selves, our radiating energy and when we finally do reconnect with it we are uncertain how to express it and feel bad when we do. I can go into all the work thats been done and why we are suppressed and who suppresses us which goes back so many years and the state of humanity as a whole is quite shaky. We are by nature faulty beings so how can we keep punishing ourselves with so much guilt and self hatred, whether its loud or subtle, there is this voice of not good enough, what are people going to say, maybe I’m being too loud, who really cares what my view is, who cares what I care about or how I see the world, it doesn’t really matter anyway because the world is so fucked up I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
I think this is the hardest part for me. The world is really fucked up. If we move beyond our local news, like really move on, I don’t mean you switch from CNN to Al-Jazeera or to BBC, I mean move beyond the mainstream news and dig into the realities of the day to day people living there lives in other countries. How are they coping, what are their challenges, what are they eating, how do they raise there children, is it the same as us here or do they do things differently? What does respect mean for them and how does it compare to our definition here in the west. How do they see us? What are their assumptions?
We can learn so much if we get just a little curious of whats beyond these media skyscrapers that block our view of the world. We just need to drive our gaze out a little bit further to reach the fields where we can see clearly all the landscapes, of all the people, of all the worlds. Vision, it is used constantly but at the same time it is unused because we see what others place in front of us, true vision arises when we move from being the seer to the seeker.
Why? Probably because we have become complacent. We have become lazy and no longer feel empowered. This word is so important to explore. It comes up over and over again. Empowerment. To feel empowered is a right and when we do everything for our kids we steal their right for empowerment, to experience empowerment. Thats what the news and other forms, or these excessive forms of media have done to us in a way. They have given us so much, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with infinite information that we have lost our drive to really explore beyond all the noise.
To become a seeker we must come back home and return to ourselves. The reset, if thats what you desire, begins within. I know this is something that you here over and over and over, or maybe you just here it from me, but to regain freedom, to regain control and to experience what it feels like to be empowered, we must take the steps to becoming the seeker of Self, there you will discover the answers that lay within that will give you strength to move above and beyond the noisy skyscrapers. You, me, all of us when we go in will have similar experiences, but there is another part that’s important, there is a uniqueness within you and I’m not speaking about some superpower where you’re going to be the next prophet, president or superstar basketball player, I mean there is a sweetness, a power that you can tap into and it will guide you, it is your own personal compass that will direct you through the good and bad times. It’s a part that will contradict much of the mainstream and the people around you, but its ok, as you go deeper within, the others, the community in which you need for support and encouragement will arrive when it’s time.
In the beginning its lonely, it’s a lonely journey but it has to be that way because if someone were to come along to early then your existing programming will just want to attach and rely on this new community. Loneliness is a power and it allows you to root deeper and deeper within. It’s why I’m cautious till this day of the content I consume, what I read, what I watch, my time on social and very much who I spend my time with. Those who are so rooted in themselves, who have been doing the work in this life and perhaps the lives that came before, they don’t pull you in, they simply hold space for you to grow.
This is something that I’ve been good at, this is a super power of mine. To hold space , to adapt with others at a cellular level so they can see themselves within me. I become a mirror for them and so we do the work together. This is both beautiful but this is where I can also lose myself, so I need to be cautious but mostly aware and it’s why I meditate for so long and it seems to be getting longer. Vairagya, this word is so powerful for me. Independence and indifference, to rise above love and hate. This is a feeling, but its also a place that I look forward to the possibility, I do believe I will reach this place, that it is a part of my evolution in this lifetime.
They said I am the teacher, so this understanding of cellular matching is kind of up to me. I guess this is where I can research the science around mirroring and see perhaps if there is any new research around it, and not just the neurons on the brain but all the cells within the body that mirror the expression and body language of another. When I’m with people, I immediately begin to mirror them, the awareness around it can be a little annoying. It’s so automatic but you know, this is a really wonderful gift and it allows you to hold space gently, compassionately and gives you the ability to really understand and feel another's emotions, another's struggles and pain but also to feel their joy and I think that this is where your weakness you can lie in the fact that your heart has been closed for so long and understandably so that you couldn’t feel another’s joy, you couldn't feel love because that part of you was closed and now that in the past few years you have opened up, more and more, learning to feel love and joy, you are learning to also make this part of you your primary residence within your body and your default energy that goes out into the world.
So now you have two sides, you feel and empathize with the ones who feel pain very well, but you are also learning to feel love, to feel joy, to shed tears, heartfelt tears. To be able to experience a broken heart is a gift, perhaps one of the greatest gifts you have given yourself with all the work you have done, this is the gift, to allow yourself to break, to feel broken. What a blessing to experience this and what a tragedy it would have been to leave this life with all of these unexperienced feelings.
There is of course more to experience, more openings to happen, but you are certainly on your path to this radiant energy expression from every cell inside your body. There is an awakening and it is time to trust it and not doubt yourself anymore. You have an opportunity to make an impact on this world and to share and write and speak about things that you have learned and experienced because it will touch the hearts of others along as you continue to stay connected to this open broken heart and you continue to break, and shed tears for others, for the world, for yourself.
It is through our tears that we will cleanse the world.
Metamorphosis
“Evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris says that the caterpillar, at a certain point in its life cycle, becomes a voracious, over-consumptive glutton consuming everything in sight and within reach. At this point in it’s evolution it can eat hundreds of times its own weight, and the more it consumes the more fat and sluggish it gets. At the same moment of developmental excess, inside the caterpillar the imaginal cells begin to stir. Imaginal cells are specialized cells, and in the minority, but when they connect with each other they become the genetic directors of the metamorphosis of the caterpillar. At some point in the caterpillars feeding frenzy stage, the imaginal cells usher in the process in which the over consumptive caterpillar becomes the “nutritive soup” out of which the imaginal cells create the miracle of the butterfly.”
From The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist
The line that gives me the most hope for humanity is "Imaginal cells are specialized cells, and in the minority,”. I believe this is true for us, as it is for the gluttonous little caterpillar, it takes only a few, the minority to usher us into the next evolution. It’s not about the numbers as much as its about how the human version of "imaginal cells" connecting with one another.
“The breakdown of the caterpillars old system is essential for the breakthrough of the new butterfly. Yet, in reality the caterpillar neither dies nor disintegrates, for from the beginning it’s hidden purpose was to transform and be reborn as the butterfly.”
From Conscious Evolution, Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential by Barbara Marx Hubbard
This quote is so important to understand that its not about being one or the other, it’s not about destroying, we are not separate, that human beings have consistently proven their ability to transform. You need not be a history buff to understand that, merely paying attention to the present moment, to those who are closest to you, you will witness a deep transformation that is occurring every single inhale and exhale.
If you are experiencing difficulty envisioning a future that is beyond this moment, a future of transformation, Barbara Marx’s Conscious Evolution is a wonderful place to begin kick starting that beautiful imagination of yours.
An Unsocial Vacation
Well, my Remarkable pad is frozen so I figure this is a nice time to try out a little journaling here on Evernote. Maybe I finally need to bite it and succumb to the reality that this is my most efficient way of journaling. You embrace and are curious about technologies like VR so why not just drop your morning thoughts on the screen. Man, sometimes your stubbornness to change kills me! We waste so much time in life because of this part of you. I know, it feels good to write, you miss the the feeling of pen to paper.
So, you woke up later then you wanted because you slept late. You are fighting this need to go to sleep and instead get sucked into your phone. You’re undoing your work from last week and know that you are so much happier when you are meditating, eating well and sleeping at a reasonable time. The groove in the mind is still there.
But, there is another pattern I noticed. When your heart is open and you’re feeling all the feels, when you’re vulnerable and feeling sad, you go to your phone to feel connected, which is fine, but you lose the connection with yourself and the divine. Your mind gets sucked up into your brain and it again becomes the primary residence for your mind. So, whats the solution? There is this question as to whether you even need to be on Instagram or if you can be there without getting sucked in, to share, to give and to get out. Easier said then done.
You have so much to do and I know what happens is that you go back to not wanting to do this on your own. I understand that. I understand that it gets exhausting doing life in single mode. What are you doing this for? Why are you waking up every morning, writing, meditating and working? What are you doing? What do you want to be doing when you come out the other side of this moment in time? Who do you want to be?
It’s important to think about a return in June and how you want to show up. It’s June 1, 2020 and when you look back at this moment, all these days you had, what do you wish you had done and what do you wish you hadn’t done and what were you happy about doing?
It’s now September 1, 2020, you’re back to the so called ‘normal’ and busying around the city, the global economic shutdown on route to becoming a mere memory, wishing again that you had time to do all the things you wanted. What are those things for you? What do you wish you had done during all the free time and mind space you had been gifted?
Ok, so you wrote, you meditated for a couple more hours a day, you even prayed and had a couple self led retreats, went for long walks, connected with those you haven’t in a while, had lengthier conversations then usual, but if thats all you did, which is wonderful, it’s not much different from your day to day life.
Remember before this all started, what were you hoping for the most? What did you want to do with the time, but more importantly the free mind space you have now?
I will let these question land deeply in my body and in the mean time I want to reflect. If I was off Instagram for 30 days, what would life be like? Where would I spend my energy? All that time it takes, but more importantly its the distraction for my mind, filling up valuable real estate. It’s just 30 days. A nice experiment to try for yourself. It’s a way to stay connected of course but what if I didn’t have that tugging on my mind? What would I do more of and how would I feel? Would I miss it? I’ve spent so much of my life alone, what would make it any different right now? It’s the hugs and in person connections I’m missing the most and this is no replacement for that.
Starting today, lets exit the world of Instagram and go on a little vacation. It’s a different type of vacation, a vacation from the social. There are so many ways to take vacation when we think about it as a getaway for the mind. How can we redefine what it means to go on vacation, one that doesn’t require planes, suitcases and all the things that go inside it? How can we reimagine a vacation for the mind, where instead of thinking how far away we can go ‘out there’ ask ourselves how far away can we go ‘in here’, without the mind altering substances. Sorry, I know many of you are travelling to far off places with some assistance but here is what I would say having a multitude of experiences with and without assistance.
When we learn to travel through the layers of our being, using our natural gifts that have been given to us, the journey is much much longer and the work very difficult, but when we arrive at our destination, the fruits that accompany the end result is infinite. This mind that you carry with you through this life and the lives after that, will be in the state that you left it here. Whether you think I’m a nut job or not, play with me here, imagine your next life in a new skin suit, but you are back here on earth, what is the state of mind that you want to re-enter with?
So I’m going on a little trip and I will return in 30 days. I am going to spend my time and allocate the real estate in my many minds to build all the things I wish I could have pre Covid-19 and setup a landing strip of my choosing post Covid-19. I am not going to call this a pandemic because we were already here before we even got here. In reality, what was happening before we arrived at this destination was a pandemic. This, in comparison, is a healing, a soothing balm that really fucking stings, but you know that already, deep down every single one of you knows that this moment is a century old wound turning into a scab.
See you May 20, 2020 Instagram!
Fifty-two Minds
How quickly I return to this place. Place of living a life where mind and brain have challenges being apart. I can’t seem to balance between being completely inward and extremely connected. There is a piece in the middle missing. Something that connects together both the internal and external. It’s like a seesaw. How do I get in balance or is this balanced?
No, I don’t believe this is a balanced mind at all. The mind was more balanced in the four days spent in silence and meditation. In the external world, the brain, the physical body, can really get a hold of the mind.
In the Sacred Readings from the Gathas, Hazrat Inayat Khan writes:
The body is the instrument of the mind
The mind is the instrument of the soul
For me, the returning back from a deep meditative state, it feels after a couple of days the mind has become the instrument of the body once again (i.e. the brain).
When I was in my four days in silence, tech free, I was able to switch, the body (for a brief time) became the instrument of my mind.
Why is it so easy to fall back into the other way? Is it the pattern, the lines carved within the mind are so deep that it will take longer for the primary mind to gain full control or perhaps there are multiple minds, some minds are stronger then others and actually its important to nurture the different minds? In the Vipassana talks the teacher Goenka mentioned as a side, there are fifty-two minds.
I actually think each cell has its own mind, a thought that arisen from my own meditations, which would mean that we have potentially trillions of minds. So lets just say humans have fifty-two minds (departments) and each mind has billions of cells (tiny minds/workers) under it.
Maybe the mind thats in silence and stillness is different then the active mind that is of the world, that allows us to function and work and play in the external. But this brain-mind, lets call it, is the dominant mind of the current ecosystem (political, social, economic etc…) we live in so the pull back to brain-mind from the collective is much greater, which is why its so easy to be pulled out of the blissful state of a still unified mind, body and spirit connection upon our return to the ‘real world’.
Side note: the deeply rooted habit patterns, if not changed, any socio, economic and political change at the physical (i.e. surface) level, is no change at all. It is merely a change of wardrobe.
Now, the centring part may come with having a deeper connection to ones spirit, where the mind becomes the instrument of the soul but this is for another day and like the fifty-two minds, we are not yet ready to tackle that. Why? Because collectively we are still moving through this world with a closed heart. Behind the heart resides our soul. For the soul to once again make the mind its instrument we have to first open up the heart. In order to open up the heart we need to move the brain-mind into our whole body, activating change and awakening at a cellular level.
So lets narrow this down to three minds to contemplate and explore:
Brain-mind (aka thinking mind)
Heart-mind (aka feeling mind)
Gut-mind (aka intuitive mind)
If we just begin with these three it will be easier then tackling even the potential idea of fifty-two minds.
Here is the catch. Because the brain-mind is so dominant we spend very little conscious time in our heart and gut and the rest of our body. However, in order to strengthen the heart and gut mind, we need to nurture it with the brain-mind. The brain-mind is whats fucking us up but it’s also what is going to save us and shift humanity into a higher vibrational playground.
This is why body scans are so important, practices such as Vipassana gets the brain-mind focused (using the Anapana, the meditation that precedes Vipassana), to slow, to pause, to move from neck down and develop a deeper awareness of our own patterns and inevitably remove the roots of patterns and behaviours allowing us to create space to plant seeds for a new way of being.
When we take the brain-mind and begin to move it through our body we are using the same mind that created all these patterns that are a result of our present behaviours, to now flip it and rid ourselves of these patterns. So the tool which created this ecosystem is the same tool that can undo and reset it.
The reality is that this alone (Vipassana/Body Scans) is not sustainable for the average human which is the majority of us. Why? Because we can go on a ten day retreat or even my recent at home four day self led retreat and lets say I rid my self of all my patterns and shitty habits, all the lines called Sankaras that are carved in my mind, but unless I am staying in solitude this is not sustainable (on its own) because I’m going to enter back into the world of the householder and my brain-mind is going to adapt and begin creating new lines, new habit patterns and soon will likely be back where it began. Or will it?
The answer is a grey one. A combination of yes and no. We will certainly have shifted and have an expanded awareness of self, but if we don’t consciously change our environment and how we live, if we come back to the same job, relationships, eating the same food, surrounding ourselves with the same energy etc..., then we will begin to re-plant the same seeds we worked so hard to rid during the time of retreat.
So whats the answer? We should all just intake some mushrooms and call it a day. Kidding, although I know some of you are nodding your head yes Talib, thats a wonderful idea. The answer is actually incorporating different meditations, including movement and prayer practices into your tool bag. If anyone today informs you that here is the one way, the best way or the only way then my suggestion for you is to walk the other way.
Most days my mind naturally syncs with breath, but some days I need other tools.
So the question arises, how do we live in this world, this world of the brain-mind and simultaneously strengthen the heart and gut mind (probably a good idea before we jump in the other potential 49 minds right?).
Let me give you an example. This morning meditation was a struggle for me. My brain-mind was too active because yesterday it’s where I spent most of my time and I couldn’t successfully move through a full body scan, so I reach into my tool bag and I pull out a heart meditation called Vishoka Meditation which I learned about during a short trip to the Himalayan Institute in Pennsylvania. There are couple of meditations that precede Vishoka, one of them being Samikarana Pranayam which is ascending and descending breath and mind from the crown to the perineum, touching 8 points in between. When my mind is super busy, I need to recruit breath into the game to help settle and sync the mind. Samikarana simultaneously calms the mind, syncing it with breath but also incorporates a different type of body scan. Once my mind has come into rhythm with breath then I can move on with my day or even transition to my usual body scan.
(If you want to learn more about Vishoka meditation, Pandit Rajmani Tignaught has beautifully written book on Vishoka Meditation.)
Sooooo where did we end up. Kind of where we started. The Brain-Mind, the current star of the human show. If you have made it this far and take one thing away from all this rambling, its this:
That which makes us sick is also our cure. Now that’s a hell of a mind fuck.
P.S. More on the feeling mind and intuitive mind to come but for now I’ll say that all minds are intricately woven and the ideal (so says my thinking mind) is to interweave, balance and equally nurture each mind, to bridge body and spirit and move on to the next stage of humanity where we all morph into unicorns! See, easy peazy!
The Soul of Money
"Could it be that the surprising truth, the revelatory truth of our time, is that our relationship with money is based in an unexamined, unquestioned set of assumptions that are myths and lies and that spur us to act in ways that rob us of the satisfaction and fulfillment we are looking for in life? Could it be that the key to turning around a runway, unsustainable economy, culture, and almost frightening time in the evolution of civilization is in confronting and embracing the surprising truth that there is enough, we have enough, we are enough, and that at the heart of every circumstance is that possibility and that opportunity?”
This is a book that I’ve been chipping away at and is about evolving our mindset around money from scarcity to sufficiency, to abundance. It was a book that needed to be read by many (in my humble opinion) prior to the world shutting down but it is even more relevant in this moment, to rethink, to kick our imaginations in high gear, to envision the world that we want to live in, a world that is abundant and that has the ability to be rooted in compassion and love despite what the algorithms of your current programming are signalling to your core.
All programs can be deprogrammed and reprogrammed they just require codes of courage and learning to become comfortable with being uncomfortable, which we have been forced to do in this moment.
It doesn’t matter how this all came about, this moment was inevitable. The divine works in mysterious ways. Nature will course correct and remember, you too are nature, as much as you may think you are purely in control, remember that our hearts beat without our doing, our trillions of cells go to work whether or not we want them too, all of our organs function or don’t without us. Nature without and nature within. Mother works both sides of the border.
My greatest fear is not this moment and economic collapse, my greatest fear is that we return to status quo.
Beyond Broken
A couple of days ago I had a beautiful conversation with a dear friend. The deepest we have had in a while.
Questions. Listening. These are super powers.
Questions unlock the doors within. Questions encourage others to look inside themselves, to begin the search.
Listening allows others to bring to the surface what they have found so they can take the unconscious and bring it into consciousness. Raise from the darkness, into the light.
What we find is not always easy, but if we keep shoving it down with our busyness, it will come to the surface in ways that are unhealthy. The most healthy way is to bring up that which resides in our unconscious, consciously. Bringing it up to the surface allows us to work with it. To heal, to understand, to create space within.
For many of us our gardens have no space to plant new seeds because we have shoved so much down, there is no more space for ourselves and authentic creations. It is all filled with the expectations of others, of societies that embed their belief systems deep within our being.
There is an opportunity to pause, to reflect, to ask ourselves and others questions and to compassionately embrace what arises. This is a gift. This is an opportunity for the individual and the collective to surrender and begin creating a world that is more gentle on the human psyche and the human heart. Only then will we be able to experience and be witness to the human spirit.
I am dreaming of a world that is an evolution from the one that was broken before it broke.
My new contract to humanity. I adore you. I love you. No conditions attached.
Skin Suit
Skin suit. I was contemplating this term in meditation today. This is temporary. I am a spirit borrowing this human body. Even if you don’t believe in spirit, it’s nice to indulge the idea and the temporary aspect of nature, of being, of the moment, of this whole life. What does that do for your mindset?
We have forgotten and we are trying to remember.
What is meditation? Well, we have forgotten who we are, why we are here, so too meditate is too remember. Who we are at our core. Meditation is coming back home. Meditation is to find love, love of self and love of all beings. It’s that simple. It’s not about achieving a particular state or feeling, it’s about a knowing, a remembering what has been long forgotten the moment we entered these skin suits.
We will keep returning over and over again, overtime we return, the suffering deepens, the darkness, the shadows widen, the light seems to no longer exist, the walk seemingly infinite because we keep chasing outside of ourselves for what resides inside. That which you desire, thirst for most is right here. It is within you. To say that you are spirit in a human body is not a belief. It is a fact. A fact that you too can discover for yourself if only you had the courage to hold space, to sit in silence, courage to get comfortable with the temporary experience of being uncomfortable, but you instead decide on the quick fixes, these temporary feelings and states of being provided by the external.
Our beliefs and facts all tied up into seemingly infinite knots. Each time we sit we loosen each knot, unwinding gently, at a methodical and digestible pace that aligns with our own being, according to our own experiences collected from the moment we arrived. Some knots tighter then others. It is a process. It requires patience, understanding and the ability to hold space for oneself.
Stillness + Silence = The road to Self Love
This is the simple formula that is, in the beginning, excruciating to execute, but the light is there, this dark tunnel has an exit point.
Only then will you able to differentiate fact from fiction.
Cellular Reflections of a Childish Heart
I speak about the heart more and more
And when there is no mention of the word, all is still rooted from here
The cerebral only to organize the letters and used to lay the constructed words on the page
The root however lays within the heart
Behind this heart of ours lays a path
At the end of this path awaits our spirit
Beyond this spirit is the divine, commonly know as the heavens
That which can be experienced in this moment, in this lifetime.
~
A closed hearted existence
The majority
The cost is high for humanity and beyond
We suffer
We burn
We drown
We starve ourselves of our true essence
We watch it daily
Yet it remains that the collective heart keeps its doors closed
Why?
What will it take to open?
How many need to perish, how much of our life do we continue to play the role of witness?
It is tiring
We have little time.
~
Silence
Stillness
There is no more radical act then this
If you want to change the world out there, then you must begin by changing the world that lays within
To change the world within, you must pause, learn to be still, to be silent, to become aware of the natural disasters that are occurring from the depths of you, from source
It is you. It is me. It is every cell within that is responsible and therefore has the power to shift our trajectory
The external is a reflection of the internal
So ask yourself, what am I reflecting?
~
But isn’t the heart weak?
You are correct, but anything that has been closed, suppressed, unused, what else would it be?
If it hasn’t seen the light of day since single digits then when you open it today, it is not the heart of an adult, but that of a child that protected itself.
Breathing the voice of resistence
Eating to much popcorn. Sleeping late. Binging Netflix (Blacklist is my guilty pleasure). These impact the quality of rest and the quality of meditation.
I breathe you, you breathe me.
If I’m not breathing properly then I am not in flow. How could I be in flow if my breath, that which gives me life and allows me to live is erratic?
How could the internal be calm and still if I don’t even acknowledge the current in which allows me to move through life?
Awareness. The key to compassion. Without awareness how can I be compassionate towards you, towards myself? Without awareness of my breath, I lack balance in my life as nothing else seems to flow with the required consistency, including compassion.
Breath is everything. It is what connects all. The body, mind and spirit. The entire earth is breathing. Breathing me. Breathing you. Breathing each other.
Meditation this morning was difficult. After years of sitting I’ve become acutely aware of my internal state, able to witness all the blockages and when the breath experiences resistance, my mind becomes erratic. It’s like the teacher is not present and so the student (mind) run's wild.
Breath. It is the subtle even flow of inhales and exhales, gently moving the energy within that equates to the quality of life we reflect outside of ourself. When life gets sticky, return to breath.
Breath is music. As I write, it is fitting that jazz is playing in the background, the sounds of the sax filling my space, both internal and external.
Without breath their is no song. My song. Your song. The world yearns for the sounds of our voice.
Take a moment today and just sit. An inventory of your own being and notice the relationship your breath has with your body. Notice your mind. Notice the relationship with mind and breath. Who is driving the bus? Mind or breath?
After 17 years of learning to sit, I’ve come to the realization that breath is everything. How it flows within, its relationship with my body at a cellular level and its connection with my mind determines the quality of the life I live. How I show up for my self and how I show up for others.
Quality of breath determines the quality of life.
The voice of resistance
It’s evening now and fitting that the sentence above is the last line I wrote this morning. Sometime the voice is loud, sometime the voice softly whispers to my body, my body uncertain, ungrounded walks around the city wasting time. Searching, procrastinating. Not wanting to come home and do the work.
Today I caught this behaviour of mine. I feel lonely when I’m out there but the moment I arrive home, I feel settled. The night is unsettling to me in this big city. It wasn’t always like this, it’s more as I age and dissolve the layers, it seems to increase awareness but also sensitivity to all forms of energy.
To be home with my words, my music, my books and my energy, I feel grounded, I feel connected to Self, to the earth and beyond. My heart, still triggered from a lack of closure. My heart is settling as I lay these words on the page. I’m supported, I feel it in my place, but out there?
The energy is erratic. Ungrounded. It throws me off. I caught the voice whispering, pulling me in different directions, filling me with uncertainty. I caught it this time and got myself on route towards the place I call home.
This feeling. Grounded, heart wide open yet settled and loving, the feeling of my spirit now having a the clear path to expression. It’s a subtle cooling sensation.
I am grateful for her. Gently breaking down the walls of resistance.
Tears of light
Dark and light
Heart and spirit
Physical and energetic
Heaven and earth
The sweet nectar that lays within. Tears. Tears cleanse the heart. Tears clear the pathway that lays between the heart and our spirit. Our spirits are yearning to shine, to play. They entered these bodies, chose this life so that we can experience the joy of humanity, to experience the five senses and beyond, the infinite layers of being.
Touch. One of many reasons we chose to enter the physical realm, yet we starve ourselves of affection. We are rotting away, missing the experience of our deeper purpose. Love.
The divine. Only one piece of the puzzle.
The heart. The gateway to the greatest high we can experience yet it is clogged up by the artificial. The what ‘should’ we be versus what we are in all it’s pureness.
Authenticity. We yearn, we crave, we starve.
Just one touch of another to feel love.
The darkness catches on to light, it is searching and yearning. So. Much. Pain. It wants to heal, yet all it does is engulf because the light has been dimmed. Weakened. Behind a closed hearted steel door. It is a vault waiting to be unlocked, a dimmer dial waiting to be turned to its highest setting. You have more power then you think. You just need to unlock the drops of clarity within so the stream may cleanse the path to your light, to your spirit. It is only then can we truly play, play the game with fairness, with love. It is then that the darkness no longer penetrates the light, but the light engulfs the darkness and rises to the surface.
When light engulfs darkness then we will truly see and feel the vastness of all life. The vastness of all dimensions, of all beings. We will return, but only if we break the damn within.
We are waiting. Tears of clarity, a resolution for all of humanity. Nothing else required.
All beings will return to the eternal flow of life, stream of energy and light downloaded directly from the heavens. The heavens that lays within all beings.
The Whole Wide World
Once in a while it’s nice to feel like this. Where some inhale and exhale to calm the mind, I inhale and exhale to activate the mind. There is a negative narrative about altering the state, but it changes perspective, allows me to see my world from a different angle. As I focused my gaze on my hands it reminded me I am in this world. I am here.
Warning: Be careful that you don’t forget that.
This, your practice is not about disconnecting, not engaging or paying attention to the external, its about seeing and approaching it differently, from a place of lightness and love. If you want to retreat, you are wasting your time here. You’ve lived a life alone, perhaps many, but now you’re here, in this body, in this world, this place called earth.
How many other places could you have chosen to be in this moment? Infinity. You chose here.
If her download was correct, you’ve already lived this type of life, this introspective monastic life, but now you’re here. Maybe you will return in this lifetime, to that peaceful state of being, but you’re here and too young to move into the past. It's too soon.
You are only beginning and it’s far too early to renounce earthly pleasures, the human experience.
I need to know what being in the world means for me.
You are of the world, not in the world.
This would be opposite of the quote from the Architecture of Peace documentary. A teacher said:
"You are in the world, not of the world.”
Both are difficult for me to digest.
Then I thinned and shifted it out a little more.
Of the world vs In the world
I keep repeating this to myself, understanding what this means to me and I arrived here:.
I am in the world and I am of the world.
I am in the world and I am of the world.
I am in the world and I am of the world.
That is the duality. To embrace duality is to become one with Self. Embracing duality brings the worlds together. Rejecting duality sends them further apart, splitting the Self into two. To become more aware of duality, of the opposites that lays within, increases the tension within.
Moving from the struggle of separation and accepting all of you, all of me and all of this world. To embrace duality, is to embrace the Whole Self.
To become one with all.
The Side Effect
Sometimes we are so deep in our own shit, our own narratives that we no longer see another way of being or the being of another.
It’s that we have to step out of the jar to read our own ingredients, it’s the arrival at this point in life, this intersection where we need to crawl our way out and destroy the bottle itself, to begin writing an entirely new recipe to fill a larger space in the hopes of widening our perspective.
Perhaps the Earth in which we all reside can become our jar and the recipe you and me require actually requires only one ingredient.
Compassion, which only comes with one side effect.
Unconditional love.