Are you ready for the show?

Are you ready for the big one? The big time? The real deal? Are you ready for the full blown "enlightenment" experience? Just to check further, are you ready to surrender to grace and leave the mind behind? Are you ready to see it all, know it all, be it all?

Think about it. Think about what we avoid and run from every day. The parts of ourselves we don't want to admit we have. Are we ready to see all if ourselves? Yes, that's me and my evil twin. 

On this path of consciousness, we become awake to more. More good as well as more bad. That's why it's important to understand how dropping judgements can help. If I drop the attachment, expectation, emotional charge from a situation, then if have nothing to fear. That situation or event or state of being can no longer hurt me. There is no more "wrong" or "blame" or "bad." There is also no more "right" (nothing to achieve) or "good" (something I can be proud of and brag about) or "better than" (something I can hold over other peoples heads).

Because when we leave our mind behind, we leave our mind behind. We leave our cognitive thought process to experience something beyond cognitive thought. We leave our judgements behind. Then we see it, know it, become it all. We "remember" all. Awesome.

Then we land back in the body and all hell breaks loose because in that moment of oneness, all hell did break loose. The difference is, that in that moment if oneness, we weren't making value judgements fraught with emotional charge, fear, and self righteousness. But now we know. We know all about the light side and the dark side because we bring that knowingness back into the body that we have been using, the one we have been growing, the one we have been training.

Are we ready for the show? The big time? Enlightenment? Are you ready to see and know all of your Self? Even the humiliating, emabarssing parts? The ugly parts? Can you still love yourself knowing you are those ugly parts too? Can you still love the world, and love god, knowing, experiencing, being, the ugly parts?

Are you ready for the show? 

#bringit #keepracting #romewasntbuiltinaday

#neitherwerehashtags

#whenyouknowyouknow

Got Guts?

This time of year, almost any time of year, many of us are uber conscious about our bellies. Hmmmmm. Maybe it's the Universe's way of getting our attention. "Pay attention to your naval center!" "Hey! Look at me! I've got a clue!" "Hey Listen to your Guts!" "Do you have the guts to hear/do what I have to say?"

When we squeeze our guts off, we are squeezing off a large part of our innate wisdom. do we really want to be "gutless?" Or do we want to have the guts to live large? To live the larger life that we all know is out there? Are we ready to embrace the fact that the larger life is within? Maybe when our guts grow uncomfortably large, or we feel bloated, it is our innate wisdom trying to get out. Maybe it is our Soul saying that we have what it takes to live large and if we would just let go, that large life IS our life.

Have the guts to love your guts. Have the guts to love your Self. Have the guts to live large. And as you relax the false sense of control that our physical and psychic girdles provide us with, you may find that having guts may result in better digestion, a more relaxed attitude, less stress. And ultimately less stress, better digestion and a more relaxed attitude may result in letting go of the extra physical weight that our bodies have imposed on ourselves to either get our attention or protect us from the barrage of our own attack.

So next time you want to bemoan or complain about your guts, try shifting the energy. Try letting your guts be heard by letting them stick out (privately if necessary), and try to calm your mind enough to actually listen past what you think they are telling you. They may have a bigger picture, and once you are willing to see and hear the bigger picture they are sharing with you, they may not need to shout so loudly.

so what's it gonna be? Got guts? or are you committed to being gutless?

To Life

"Pay attention to life. She will pay attention to you." I have heard those words from at least 3 of my major teachers. Start treating what is contained in life with respect and reverence. Treat all as if everything is conscious. In order to do this and still be able to eat, walk,  breathe, you gotta let go of judgements or you'll be afraid to move for fear of harming something.

Talk to the trees, the bugs, the kitchen counter. Your elbow, your back, your teeth, your pancreas. Whatever is bugging you, talk with it. Sit with it. Get to know it before trying to change it. Consider it spiritual foreplay. Make friends with your external environment. Make friends with you internal environment. 

They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer, which means that it pays off to include all aspects, not just the ones that are easy to know, easy to love. Love thine enemy. I think Jesus was really talking about loving yourself. Loving the Whole of you. 

Vacation- Every day

Vacation. Vacate. Getting the hell outa dodge. Sometimes it is easier to retreat. To say No. To "get away from it all."

What are we getting away from? The hustle and bustle? The internet? Cell service? Our jobs? Our kids? Our families? Food? Our habits, aka our physical self as we are used to it?

And retreat is fine. It's kind of like fasting. A place to reboot, recharge, assess. A place to make New Year's Resolutions after New Year's. And these moments where we change our momentum, where we pull ourselves off the wheel, are important. We gain perspective. We see that there are other ways to make it through the day. We see that maybe we don't need 12 cups of coffee to make it through the day. As we go on a self-imposed "fast" from our usual routine, we open ourselves to the possibility of change.

The downside of "fasting" is that often we don't learn how to eat. We know what not to eat - we know what we shouldn't do - drink 12 cups of coffee, but when plunked back into life as we know it, the buffet of life, do we know how to eat? Do we know what to do, to choose, to keep that feeling of the fast or the vacation going while we live in the world that we've created for ourselves to live in?

I'm using the metaphor for diet because we all eat. And it's important to make the distinction that knowing how to eat is different than knowing how to starve. Knowing how to eat is being able to make choices, to understand what makes us healthy, to know what really feeds us and embrace all. It means being in present moment and knowing that sometimes the "forbidden food" is what we need. What it really means is being inclusive instead of exclusive, where there is no forbidden foods. There are no "cheat days." We know how to eat anything we want, digest it fully, and not feel gross at the end of the meal. We want to learn how to live. How to stay balanced every day.

Often it is easier to go on a diet than to learn how to eat. To go on a retreat, than learn how to live. So we learn how to make daily life a retreat. We start to embraced "retreat living every day."  We start to pay attention that instead of NOT drinking 12 cups of coffee, we get a bit more sleep or put our legs up the wall or close our eyes for a few minutes instead. We take a moment to show appreciation or to find something beautiful (remember how we love to gush about stuff like this on vacation!) To say what is positive about a situation instead of jumping to the negative. To find the balance in everyday life is living on vacation every day.

Awake to awakening

Patanjali's Yoga sutra 1 says "now, therefore, the complete instruction of yoga." The "therefore" implies that something has come before and the student is now ready. This is the moment of awakening. The student is ready for more. The student is ready to see in a new way. How many moments of awakening do we have in one day? How many times do we close the door to awakening, saying, "I don't want to know. I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to understand. I just done want it." Sometimes, we don't think we have time for change. Sometimes we like things the way they are. And at that moment when we are ready for more, "now, therefore, the complete instruction of yoga." Yoga begins. Again.