Feeling the squeeze

Today is a gorgeous mild and sunny day in the middle of winter in Buffalo. A blessed gift to say the least. Passing by the car wash, I had the urge to wash the dirt salt and grime off my car, so I made a quick lane change and pulled into the Delta Sonic. Once inside the wash, I felt scared and claustrophobic - I felt my chest tighten and my breathing get quick, like the world crushing down on me. I reminded myself not to give in to the feeling of contraction by tightening up but to respond to it with space - acceptance, deeper breathing, expanding. When I gave in to the feeling, it passes. When I drop the need to change the situation or how I feel, the "problem" evaporates.

Today I was talking with my spiritual sister about life and how it can feel so crushing at times. Much like I felt in that car wash - an unexpected car repair (new tires-so soon?!), relationship stress, no clear direction in life all can feel like a pounding, like life keeps coming at you. She asked me if it ever ends. I laughed and said "no." There will never not be something to pay for or something to fix; never a time of no new or unexpected need. Things do not last. Everything cycles, degrades and/or changes, such is the nature of life on earth. The source of stress and anxiety isn't that things break and that people don't behave the way you want them to. The source is our expectation that our boat should not be rocked. Once you accept that you are alive and at sea, the waves are expected, even anticipated and maybe even enjoyed. Life is a bumpy ride, folks - seatbelts, helmets and/or surf boards are optional.

I recently bought a house - a process that I found extremely stressful yet revealing and profoundly life altering in so many ways. This time of pressure showed me my falsehoods and forced me to ask for help and to rely on others. It opened my eyes to the fact that I expected people to fail me and that I operate from a basic assumption that it is better to rely on no one and do everything myself. Suddenly I found myself in a position where there were things that needed to get done that I could not do myself. Things that my lawyer or the seller or the bank needed to do. I found myself forced to trust others to take care of me and realized this was foreign ground. In the free fall of trusting without a net, I learned to let go of the fetal position and wait for the cushion to be there to break my fall. And it was.

My sister asked me why we go through these times. And I told her that what else would be the point? We must be placed in situations that squeeze the junk out of, that force us to question our unconscious beliefs, that make us see the truth, that make us speak the truth. We must drop the veil and see ourselves clearly. We must kindle a fire by any means to burn off the dross at any cost. Or we find ourselves in perpetual "Groundhog's Day" aka "same day, different $&@".

There is a Bible quote that I have often pondered on "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." I can make no claim to be a Bible scholar. I can only speak of my experiences and the understanding I believe I take from them. In the past I got hung up on this idea of what is being pointed to in "a rich man." Do you HAVE to be poor to meet God, I wondered. Now I believe the take away is you have to be willing to drop it all. So long as you cling to one thing, anything at all - whether it be money, a material possession, a person, relationship or specific point of view/belief - true freedom will elude you. When you hold nothing, everything is revealed. When you admit you you don't know the truth, you are the truth.

So smile when you feel like the camel, squeezing thru the eye of the needle or the car being pummeled with soap, foam and giant wash clothes. God is trying to show you what remains when the glass is washed clean. "For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face."

Om Namah Shivaya

All my love

All the world's a stage...

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances”

” …for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”~William Shakespeare

This morning while basking in that state of just waking, I thought, What a blessing to be alive and awake in a world that is alive and awake! I love when I am still enough to feel the aliveness of this world in the air…... I used to think that life was a story and that Jennifer was the main character and that everything that happened should benefit me in every way….oh what suffering that brought!

Now, I see that this world is alive and I am here to serve the play ~ Lila as the Hindu tradition calls it. I have no control over the play of life but I do have control over how I see my role, how I perform, over what attitude I bring to my role and over whether I am going to be on the “D list” or give an Oscar-worthy effort! Attitude is everything and the only thing in this world that I own completely. Thank you life for calling me to serve…Namaste.

Jeff Foster

Jesus said to them:
“When you make the two one,
And when you make the inside like the outside
And the outside like the inside,
Then will you enter the Kingdom.”

- Gospel of Thomas


From: Life Without a Centre

Rest. Rest. Rest in God's love. The only work you are required now to do is to give your most intense attention to His still, small voice within.


-Madame Jeanne Guyon

I am full of love tonight

Come look into my eyes, and let’s go off

Sailing, my dear, on a long ocean ride.

This world will not touch you,

I will keep you snug upon my seat.

Let’s plot

To make the moon jealous.

With a radiance leaping from your cheek.

I will be full of love tonight,

Come look into these ancient eyes!

And let’s go off sailing, my dear,

With our spirits intertwined.

Your body is just an old sandbar

In a speeding hourglass of time.

Love will turn the mouth of sorrow

Right side up.

Let your heart commence its destined

Laughing chime!

Hafiz will be brimful of love tonight,

Why ever be shy?

Come look into the playful eyes of my verse,

They are eternally branded,

Branded with

The Sun!”

~ Hafiz

Powerful Pointer

"What you are afraid of happening in the future is what you are living, in the present."
~ Stuart Schwartz

"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly."
– Richard Bach

Today's Fortune...

God, gather and turn my thoughts to you.
With you is light, you do not forget me.
With you is help.
With you is patience.
I do not understand your ways
but you know the way that is mine.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

New Earth Favorite Quote - Chapter TWO

"If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that's just more ego."
~Tolle

Grace

Divine grace is essential for Realization...

What We Speak

What we speak
Becomes the house we live in.

Who will want to sleep in your bed
If the roof leaks
Right above
It?

Look what happens when the tongue
Cannot say to kindness,

"I will be your slave."

The moon
Covers her face with both hands

And cannot bear

To look.

Love IS

“Love is a state of Being.

Your love is not outside; it is deep within you.

You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you.

It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

In the stillness of your Presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality

as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form.

You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature.

You look beyond the veil of form and separation.

This is the realization of oneness.

This is love.”

~ Eckhart Tolle

♥

No Inner Baggage

Many people don't realize until they are on
their deathbed and everything external falls
away that no thing ever had anything to do
with who they are. In the proximity of death,
the whole concept of ownership stands
revealed as ultimately meaningless.

In the last moments of their life, they then
also realize that while they were looking
throughout their lives for a more complete
sense of self, what they were really looking for,
their Being, had actually always already
been there, but had been largely obscured by
their identification with things, which
ultimately means identification with their mind.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit," Jesus said, "for
theirs will be the kingdom of heaven.
''What does "poor in spirit" mean? No inner
baggage, no identifications. Not with
things, nor with any mental concepts that
have a sense of self in them.

And what is the "kingdom of heaven"? The simple
but profound joy of Being that
is there when you let go of identifications and so become "poor in spirit."

Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth

Forgive the Dream

All your images of winter

I see against your sky.

I understand the wounds

That have not healed in you.

They exist

Because God and love

Have yet to become real enough

To allow you to forgive

The dream.

You still listen to an old alley song

That brings your body pain;

Now chain your ears

To His pacing drum and flute.

Fix your eyes upon

The maginficent arch of His brow

That supports

And allows this universe to expand.

Your hands, feet, and heart are wise

And want to know the warmth

Of a Perfect One's circle.

A true saint

Is an earth in eternal sping.

Inside the veins of a petal

On a blooming redbud tree

Are hidden worlds

Where Hafiz sometimes

Resides.

I will spread

A Persian carpet there

Woven with light.

We can drink wine

From a gourd I hollowed

And dried on the roof of my house.

I will bring bread I have kneaded

That contains my own

Divine genes

And cheese from a calf I raised.

My love for your Master is such

You can just lean back

And I will feed you

This truth:

Your wounds of love can only heal

When you can forgive

This dream.

~ Hafiz from "The Gift" translations by Daniel Ladinsky

Don't forget to forgive the dreamer, too...

Puppetji

Socksang for everyone:
http://www.puppetji.blogspot.com/

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

Bliss is not added to your nature,
it is merely revealed
as you true and natural state,
eternal and imperishable.

You are really
the Infinite, Pure Being,
the Self Absolute.

The only way to be rid of your grief
is to know and be the Self.

Om Asatoma

Om Asatoma Sat Gamaya
Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Mrityorma Anritam Gamaya

Lead me from the unreal to the Real
Lead me from the darkness to the Light
Lead me from the temporary to the Eternal

Soul Work

I Dedicate Myself to the Lovework of the Soul:

Love, real love, brings out the best in us. When we are available to love and be loved, there is a fullness of being that leads us out beyond our self-centered concerns as we extend to embrace a wider and wider world.

What could be a better arena for this kind of soul work than relationship. The differences between two people, and the challenges they provide, compel us to consider the otherness of ourselves. They also offer an ongoing variety of experiences which lead us beyond what we could have ever imagined. When we take up our lovework, we give a gift of will and commitment to the soul which returns to us a connection to the infinite.

So, that is what your relationship offers--nothing less than a bridge from the infinite below to the infinite above, from what is within you that that which is around you, from the mundane to the sacred--from life to love to the Divine to source to God.

Relationship...was created as your perfect tool in the work of the soul.

~Neal Donald Walsch
(thanks to CJ)

Mask

MASK

I see you. Behind that mask...I know it's you.

Like characters in a pantomime or celebrating Mardi Gras, we all wear a mask. You don't know everything about the people closest to you, and so much less about people just outside your immediate circle - including colleagues and neighbors, and even some relatives.

And they know about as much about you, because the rest of the details are all hidden behind your mask.

The lighter your mask, the more open you are, the more fruitful your relationships will be. And the more risk of getting bruised. But without risk, there is no reward.

I am not going to ask you to remove your mask, as such a drastic move would be more traumatic than helpful. But I do ask you to find ways to make that mask lighter, to share more of yourself with more people, and to invite them to do the same. The more fruitful our relationships, the happier we are.

So let me see a little more of the you behind that mask.

~courtesey of http://TheHappyGuy.com

Meet It Here - Now...

If objects have an independent existence,
i.e., if they exist anywhere apart from you,
then it may be possible for you to go away from them.

But they do not exist apart from you;
they owe their existence to you, to your thoughts.
So where can you go to escape them?

...Sri Ramana Maharshi


Don't run away...turn and face yourSELF everywhere.