An oldie but a goodie from a past meditation gathering

I found this while sorting through some old files. This is an article I wrote that was published in a local magazine some years ago.

The driving force behind everything The Healing Center does is to provide an environment where you can remember what it’s like to be still. And in that stillness you become re-acquainted with who you really are. You begin to remember. You begin to remember that you are, and always
have been, at perfect peace and perfect stillness. It is our natural state of being. It’s just that sometime we forget.

Lord knows it easy to do. Our days are filled to the brim with plans, and schedules and commitments, and information overload, and stresses, and regrets, and anticipations, and worrying, and laughter, and tears; well you get the idea. It so easy to forget what that still small voice which resides in each of us sounds like.
The following is my personal account of what transpired last night at our weekly meditation gathering. I lead our group but for the most part I was but a translator. I would listen and try to share what I was hearing as clearly as possible. The source of this I leave up to you although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me. Some may call it a story. Some may call it a parable. I leave that for you to decide.
I listened and I spoke. The following is what I heard.
I want to speak to you of dreams. Not the kind that enter your nightly slumber and take you on adventures and fantasies. I’m speaking of the dreams that filled your days when you were so very young and for many of you have slowly faded away into distant memories.
My children, I love you all so dearly. My admiration, encouragement, and healing touch surrounds you a fresh and anew this night. I have wonderful news to share with you. You and I share a secret. A secret that we shared before your very conception into this physical experience you call life.
You see I knew you in the beginning. You and I were one. In the place where there is no
beginning or end. No start or finish. No up or down. Simply a place of being. In that place you were at perfect peace and perfect stillness. You remembered. You knew who you were.
Then came the moment of conception. The moment when the miraculous, creative power, of pure intention heralding your journey on this place called earth. The moment when the vehicle you call your body began to develop. According to a plan and purpose that was fearfully and wonderfully constructed.

In that very moment I also placed in you a purpose which manifests in your life
through a myriad of dreams and desires. We chose these together you and I. Before time began. It was a wonderful time where we laughed and danced. We talked about the wonderful adventures we would have together. As the two of us embarked on this journey of discovery and remembrance you call life.
We placed these intricate creations deep inside your heart. In a place that no matter the depths of the valleys or the dizzying peaks you would travel in your experience would be disturbed. It’s the place where you and I can still commune with each other. Not through your mind. Not through your body. But through your heart. For some of you this happens often. Other it does not. Some of you I have not spoken to in some time. I yearn to do so.

“Where is this place I speak of?” you may ask. I say to you most assuredly it’s the moments in which you are silent. The times when you are completely alone. But you see you are never really alone. There is nowhere you can go where I am not. There is nothing you can do to distance yourself from me and my presence. Even in those times when you have forgotten who you are and what your dreams were I remember. As clear as the moment we created them.
The secret is your potential. Unlimited, purposeful potential, sparked by the most creative power in all the universes. The deceptively simple act of choice. You have the power to choose. Through your choices, sparked by your intention, and fueled with your passion you literally have the power to create and re-create your world.

Some say to me “How is this so? For so long I have wandered about lost. And not even knowing I was.“ Others say “It’s too late. Maybe once when I was young. But not now. Too many years have passed. Too many wrong decisions. Too many obstacles.” Still others say nothing. For them there is simply nothing left to say. The dreams they once had have been forgotten for so long. They’re not even a faint memory. The stinging reality of their
world has chased them away.
To them, and to you, I say you have not lost them. They are merely forgotten. And the
remembrance, and the knowing of who you are is still vibrant and alive safely secured in the depths of your heart. Search for those moments of stillness. Those times when your world quiets down. Even for a moment. And listen. I’m there. If you listen very carefully you will hear my voice.
As you hold a blade of grass remember me. When the snowflakes of a winter’s day descend
gently from the sky coming to rest upon your open palm. Remember me. For I am there. In those times when you feel most alone. I am there.
I remember. I always have. I always will. And together. You and I. We will remember who you really are.
Perfect stillness. Perfect peace. All is well. All is just as it should be.
You are pure potential. Nothing in this physical world can snatch it from you nor drown it out.

It’s never too late. It’s never too late to remember.

I finally arrived but somehow I thought it would look different

The Myth of the dream

Often we will hear someone say it takes a long time to build success. We don’t like that because we think that we will have to wait for years before we can experience the feelings that we think our picture of perfection will give us. This is our first mistake. First of all, you have to know that when you achieve your external circumstance that you feel is perfect, it won’t be perfect.

You will have problems and challenges there just as much as you have them now. They may be different but they will still be there. Your picture of perfection is not a destination it’s simply another set of experiences along your way.

Many of us have desired something however haven’t even started down the path towards it because we feel it will take too long before we are able to feel the feelings of obtaining it. For example, imagine someone watching a concert pianist and wishing to be able to play like that but not taking lessons! We feel it will take too long before we can experience the feeling of playing so we never even start to learn.

The good news is you can feel those feelings you desire right now. The secret is that those feelings are what you will experience as soon as you start to take steps towards your dream.  When you understand that it’s always about the journey and not the destination you will begin to feel the feelings of being at your destination as you, step by step, head in that direction.

The Two Commandments

In the beginning of my journey into wholeheartedly creating my experience rather than being a victim to it,  I listened to hours and hours of teaching from people who have truly walked the walk. As I listened to the unique approach each one had there were two underlying principles that kept rising to the surface. I figure if they all agree and give testimony to these principles they must have some intrinsic value to them. I have followed these principles and now also agree, not only in principle, but in application and experience.

They are:

The Power of Persistence. With out fail every one of my teachers gives testimony that the primary reason they are where they are is because they simply did not quit. I remember listening to an interview with Will Smith when he was asked about his thoughts on how he achieved the degree of success he had.  I’m paraphrasing what he said. “Others may be better than me, may know more than me, have more advantages than me; however they will not outlast me. I simply will not stop. I may “die” in the process but that’s the only thing that will stop me”. And yes, it’s “that” Will Smith.

You simply cannot fail if you do not quit.

Believe in something bigger than us. Laying aside the labels, every teacher emphasized the importance of belief in something bigger than themselves. I echo their sentiments. We are never alone and there are bigger “forces” in play in this world. We are, in a very real way, a conduit through which creation flows. It is truly not by our own strength that creation happens.

Much of the work that we are in charge of is daring to believe, challenging the limitations in our life, refusing to listen to defeating words from our friends and from ourselves. When we break through that invisible barrier between allowing our world to be created by our external experiences and creating our external world from the inside out we know who we are, and whose we are.

If I had a million dollars

I’m betting we have all fantasized about what our life would be like if we had a million dollars. We watch the commercials about the latest lottery winner, live vicariously through the movie stars, and lifestyles of the rich and famous. For myself, I used to often watch/read the headlines about the latest idiot blunder that some movies stars, real estate moguls, or rock stars had stumbled into and thought to myself “What the heck were they thinking? If I was in their place that would never happen to me.” I also bet I’m not alone in that observation.

I used to think that way. But not so much anymore.

Here’s a gargantuan revelation that will change the way to live your life forever once you understand it and practice it.

Ready? Here it is.

No matter where you go. You are still there.

Expecting something more elloquent? <g> Let me explain.

In one of my past postings I talked about the value of every once in a while stopping, doing an about face, and discovering how far you have grown and how much progress you have made.

When I do that exercise looking back let’s say to this time last year I can remember talking/dreaming/wishing about where I would be a year from then. Salivating about how cool it would feel, how free I would be, how successfull, how happy, etc, etc. Knowing that when/if the predications I was offering came to pass I would spend each day marinated in gratitude and alive with the “buzz” that comes from living our passions.

When I look at my experiences even of the last few months I discover again that my prophecies are coming true. The words and affirmations that were only that, 12 months ago are now real life, everyday, experiences.

It was during one of these manifestations that I discovered the life changing truth that everywhere I go I take me along.

I remember it well. I was sitting on an outdoor patio in the middle of downtown Austin Texas nibbling away at the best chips and salsa I have ever tasted. The temperature was a balmy 110 degrees. I had just participated in another fantastic Reiki workshop with some fantastic people. All was “perfect”

I found myself questioning why I didn’t feel the exhileration that I “knew” I would feel. Almost scolding myself for not feeling more gratefull for the blessings I was living.

It was in that moment, that I re-learned a very fundamental principle of living a peacefully empowered life. I had a brand new empathy for those people I saw on television and in headlines that I used to berate and wonder how they could do such bonehead things when life was so abundant for them.

It’s really so incredible simple.

Peace, stillness, and power truly come from within. Your external circumstances, whether good or bad (I’ve had my abundant share of both in the last couple of years) do not dictate your internal state of being. You bet they can provide a temporal stimulus that’s lucious and in perfect resonance with how you wish to feel on the inside. But they come and they go because that’s the nature of nature in our physical world.

I realized again that peace, stillness, and power are my responsible and my choice.

Not because of our external circumstances but through a consistant inner choice.

If you had a million dollars, it could buy all sorts of external pleasures. And those are all good, and perfect, and excellent. Remember though, you would still be you.

I don’t know about you but I find that quite reassuring. The state of being that you “know” you would feel if you had a million dollars can be yours right now.

Being Grateful is a choice (selection from my upcoming book)

I’m approaching the home stretch of writing my first book. Kind of a cool experience actually. As the birthing date draws nearer I thought I would offer a few “teasers” to whet your appetite…. <g>

Now let us speak of gratitude for a moment. So often you say you find it difficult to be grateful. You look at what you have, and look at others around you, and realize what you don’t have, and you say how can I be grateful. Of course you can’t be grateful when you look at everyone and everything in your external world. Here is a little bit of very valuable information for you. No matter how much you have or posses there will be someone who possesses much more.

However, no matter how much you have or posses there will also be many who have so much less that you do.

So how can we be truly be grateful? Simple. Quit comparing. Comparing can be very dangerous. Yes we can look at those who have not and be grateful for what we have. However it seems like far too often we take the other route and look at those who have more. Then use this perspective as a weapon pointed directly at ourselves.  The key to being grateful is to look at what is in front of you then stop. Release the need to compare. Gratitude is not about comparing. Not for one second. It is about appreciating everything that is in your experience in this moment.

I’ll give you an example. I was teaching a workshop on a particular weekend and as had been my practice I would refrain from indulging in restaurant food, buy groceries from a local store and make lunch in my room. In this particular case my room had a microwave and a small fridge. No utensils of any kind. One of my practices is that I will eat whole grain cereal in the evening. However I had no bowl, not even a spoon. So it was time to innovate. As I stopped by the local grocery store I noticed in their deli they had plastic spoons. Aha a spoon. Now all I had to do was find a bowl. As I looked around my room I spied the small decanter on the coffee maker. Viola, a bowl. My “dilemma” was solved.

For the rest of the weekend I had my plastic spoon and “bowl”. Whenever I looked at my glorious dishes and cutlery I was grateful. Grateful that I had my spoon and my bowl. Now I know this may seem like almost an insult to many who will say you don’t know the conditions of my life. If I only had your “problems” of a bowl and spoon. I say to you that you can truly be grateful for what you have, simply do not compare.

Gratitude is not about comparison. Gratitude is looking at your present moment experience and simply being grateful. It is actually easier than you think. As long as you don’t compare. As soon as you compare you can slip into that “look what they have” mode and out the door goes gratitude. Release the need to compare. The need to compare what you have with what others have.

Besides that none of us really “owns” anything anyway. We are simply temporary custodians of it. All you have to do is watch the weather channel and see where peoples’ entire lives have been literally washed away through hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, etc. Release the need to compare what you have done with what others have done. Release the need to look at what you don’t have. In order to see what you don’t have you have to have something to compare your “don’t havidness” to. When you release the need to compare you see what you have for what it truly is. Simply a temporary, in many ways insubstantial, experience. One last comment. Being grateful for what you are experiencing in the moment, then releasing your attachment to what you are experiencing in the moment, which releases you to experience new objects, places, people, and events that are a direct reflection of the simple, yet powerful, choice of “choosing” to BE grateful.

It really is a simple matter of choice.

I’m not lost, I just don’t presently know where I am

Whenever I find myself visiting a new city I will make my make first adventure destination the downtown core. I find this is often the oldest part of town and offers a wonderfully eclectic mix of new and old in both architecture and lifestyle.

It’s also the best place to find a local tourist information booth where I can find one of those places of interest maps that I’m sure all of you have seen at one time or another. Historical points of interest, parks and botanical gardens, and other aspects of the city will be displayed in colorful, easy to understand pictures and cartoons.

This is all well and good, however, the only way I know how to get from where I am to where they are is to figure out where I am. That’s the only way I’ll know if the museum is just around the corner or half way across town.

It’s been my experience we often find ourselves in a very similar place as we travel our evolutionary path of personal and spiritual growth. I know for myself it’s incredibly easy to sometimes  stop, take a look at where I’m at and berate myself for not being as far ahead as I think I should be.

Here’s a little trick that I’ll often use to help me gain perspective.

Don’t just stop and look around but do an about face and look back at where you’ve come from.

Go ahead, look back six months, a year, or five years. You might just be surprised at how far you’ve actually travelled. I find growth is not a goal to attain but often a subtle awareness of how far we’ve come.

And if, by chance, you look back and realize you maybe haven’t travelled as far as you had hoped, don’t worry. You now have a renewed realization of where you’re at. Take out the tourist map of your journey, select the destination you wish to experience and simply start heading in that direction.

You’ll get there, maybe sooner than realize.

Is there a piano tied to your butt??

Many of you that know me well know my love and appreciation for walking. It is one of my favourite pastimes for many reasons one of them being the ability to see so much of what’s around us all the time but we miss because we’re busy rushing past it.

Each day as I walk to the coffee shop I encounter a fellow riding a bike delivering bundles of flyers to mailboxes through out the neighborhood. I first noticed him last fall and over the course of time we have developed a “How’s it going?” relationship as we pass each other.

Even though we have never had a conversation, this guy really impressed me. At first glance someone may look at this 40 something guy riding a bike and delivering flyers as someone that could be/should be doing “better”. I mean that’s a job for kids right, not 40 year old adult?

While I don’t know his story and the myriad of decisions that resulted in him performing this “meanial” task he’s not sitting at home and wondering what could have been, he’s out making a difference in his life.

While that would be enough to cause me to admire his initiative it didn’t stop there.

As fall gave way to an unusually cold and snowy winter, here was this guy out delivering flyers. In the minus 30 degree temperatures, with frost coating the spokes of his wheels, he was still out there making a difference in his life.

This morning, as per usual, I noticed him approaching the door of a house with a bundle of flyers his bike parked on the sidewalk. He was probably a half block away but I couldn’t help but notice some type of black bag slung over his shoulder. This was new but I figured it was probably similar to a mailbag that he was now using to carry the bundles.

As I continued walking he overtook me from behind and offered our usual morning greetings as he rode past. it was in that moment I got a good look at the black bag.

It didn’t contain bundles of flyers at all, but a bottle of oxygen attached to plastic tubes connected to an oxygen delivery device he wore on his face. Lord knows he had very good reasons for not riding his bike for miles around the neighborhood delivering flyers that day.

Yet here he was, making a difference in his life.

The next time I feel the tendency to look at my external experience and give them the power to choose who I will be and what I will do that day….

I’ll think of my 40 year old friend, his bycycle, the snow, and the oxygen bottle.

And remember that I don’t have a piano tied to my butt.

And get up and make a difference in my life.

Maybe today would be a good day to look at your behind and see what not’s there, then get up and make a difference.