Word Power

How long is never? Very long, because never, never comes. So I don't like to use that word frequently. 

No, however, is a respectable word. It has traction. It keeps me from over committing. It keeps bad stuff out.

“Neither” is one of those in between words. The word “neither” won't get you out of a jam, but it will make it clear what you mean. When someone says, "I don't eat many fried foods." and you quickly respond - "Neither do I," everyone knows exactly what’s up.

Words can be so helpful. They can take us far, but words aren’t the master, we are. We can take a perfectly good word, deliver it with sarcasm, and the word seems tainted. We can use a word to uplift or support. We can change the tone of our words and make even the most innocent word a bullet. 

What kind of master do you want be? Will you be a benevolent word master or a cruel word lord? 

Just a thought from your Joy Provider. 

Conscious Healing

From Eternity to Here

Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Debra Kerr, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Borgnine, and Donna Reed starred in the 1953 movie, From Here to Eternity. A stellar cast brings a WW II love story to life. The movie won eight Academy Awards. We need a movie called “From Eternity to Here.” It wouldn’t be a story about a love affair; it would be a story that strips our mind of its demands and delivers us to the simplicity of the present moment.

The now moment gets great billing. Books about living in the now populate every seeker's bookshelf, but actually living in the now is a cozy concept that most people plan to get to in the future.

What is it about the now that is so elusive? What is more important than what’s happening in the present? It’s our thoughts. We love our thoughts. They are the Legos of our reality. We build our beliefs, thought by thought, and then play them relentlessly in our heads. These structures are our foundation, and everything we see, feel, and hear, filters through our belief systems before they are accepted as reality. These filters are the veil. They are the illusion of life. They fashion our reality and spit it out. It’s a virtual reality, not reality itself. We are not awake to reality; we are asleep. Even though the present seems boring, it is this moment that holds the key to enlightenment. Enlightenment is an elusive idea, but enlightenment is simply freedom from the mental and emotional tangles caused by speculative thinking.

In some way, everything in our lives points home. The twists and turns of daily life move us in the direction of peace, harmony, and freedom. The egoic mind eagerly jumps in and creates a detour. It guards each moment, creating content that knocks us off center and back into variations of panic, depression, or anger.

The egoic mind delays our freedom and, while this is not a problem when we look into eternity, it is a problem in our day to day lives. Living in our heads, following the horror stories, judgments, and fears, places us in the dust of life, not in the rich soil of our being.

In 1997 I met Gangaji. I attended a small gathering in Nashville, Tennessee. I was fascinated with this woman. She was a southern woman; she was a cheerleader in high school, was married and divorced from a doctor, the consummate success for a southern woman; and she was enlightened. She was free. Her life was no longer dominated by a recount of the horror stories of the past, nor was she slave to the promises of the future. She was present and at peace. It was in that meeting that I discovered the immanence of peace. It is now. Peace is ongoing and, regardless of anything happening in the world, peace lives now. This peace is connected. It is woven together by the warp and weave of love and compassion.

Enlightenment is freedom, but it is also the ongoing knowing that the kingdom is at hand, not in the future. This is the food of the mystic, a deep knowing that everything is okay and it will always be okay. The egoic mind lives on creating panic, urgency, emergency, and struggle. It is an emotional entertainer, but deeper than these amateur distractions, is the Source, the real professional, and we are a part of that Source.

The greatest contribution we can make to our lives is to reclaim our inheritance. It seems as if we never hear the reading of the will, Source’s will, which bequeaths peace to everyone. We can start on the path by making an ongoing, continual commitment to give up our ego driven suffering and to tune into the ongoing presence of peace.

The following agreement is one you make with yourself.

My Commitment to Peace

I, ___________________________, am willing to give up the ego driven struggle, stress, drama, and sacrifice in my life. I believe that peace is always available, and I choose to turn toward that immense ongoing reality. I understand that my Higher Self assists me in letting go of my ego and supports me in choosing and living in peace, with myself and others. I join the River of Life in this instant and continue to choose peace until I naturally let go into the ongoing of life and no longer need to choose. I am currently nurtured by a power that is much more powerful that my egoic mind, and I chose to serve this power in my thoughts and in my dealings with others. I am an instrument of peace. So Be it.
Click here to download a printable and frameable pdf of this Commitment.

Seeing What is Already Here

One day in January of 2014 I looked refrigerator door and found a ghost.  There were so many notes, coupons, and pictures stuck on my fridge that notes got lost. While clearing expired coupons, I found a sticky note. It said "hummus, sprouts, and jacket." My heart stopped. It was put there by my dear deceased friend, Judy. I recognized her handwriting. She had probably come home with me, put her food in the fridge, her jacket in the closet, and written a note as a reminder to take them home. Now the jacket she wanted to remember hangs in my closet. I inherited it. Her body retired more than a year before, and the note was there all this time, but I never noticed. How many things do we overlook, not just one time, but consistently?

Is it possible that the answers we so desperately seek are here all along, available to us but overlooked? Enlightenment is about seeing what is already here. While we are having a fit about being in the dark, the light inside is always shining. Things are just not the way they appear to the conditioned mind, and if we want freedom, we have to realize that nothing is missing; everything is okay. Nothing missing. Got it?

Happy Today Tune Into Joy

I don't want to charge into this day. I don't want a challenge. Challenges are made in my mind. I don't want to see how much I can get done. Things may get done, but not at the expense of my aliveness. I don't want to look for what's wrong - what can be improved or fixed. I want to enjoy today. I want to unwrap each moment like a present. If I don't look at the joy that is always already present, I will forever be looking to fix something in order the get that joy. I can't make joy or get joy, but I can perceive the joy of presence. Happiness requires effort or the confluence of circumstances to meet my ideas of what is good or right. I will not be seduced by the normalcy of harried thinking. I am here now and that is more than enough.

Don't Be Careful

“Being present means living without control and always having your needs meet. For people who are tired of the pain, nothing could be worse than trying to control, what can’t be controlled. If you want real control, drop the illusion of control. Let life live you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself a story of how it doesn’t and that’s a story that can never be real. You didn’t make the rain to the sun or the moon. You have no control over your lungs or your heart or your vision or your breath. One minute you are fine and healthy and the next minute you are not. When you try to be safe, you live your life being very very careful, and you may end up having no life at all. Everything is nourishment. I like to say. ‘Don’t be careful, you could hurt yourself’.”*

*Byron Katie excerpted from “A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony With the Way Things Are.”

Yesterday we drove about 300 miles as we did the day before. As I’ve grown older, I find myself being more fearful of traffic. My vision is not as it was in my youth, but I seem to be cautious even when I am not the driver. I sometimes avert my eyes when we get what seems too near a car; I anticipate problems, my adrenaline flows as if I am in danger. Jim drove the whole way.  I decided to be fully present to what was occurring. I realized how fear was my “protection”, it takes me away from the reality of the moment. My mind thinks that to meet reality where it is, provokes danger. The joke was that the only danger around was my fear. My fear is like a poison I take to make myself healthy. I got into this reality thing, dropped the fear and looked out with/through awareness. I tuned in with deep curiosity and all of the sudden it was all a miracle. The posts rising from the soil. Consciousness looking out a body and speeding along through space. Wow, the noises, the new images swiftly appearing and disappearing. I cannot say that I remained in this heaven on earth but I can report that heaven is alive on the freeway and it is alive now. This stillness, this peace, is bigger than the noise, the fear, the tractor trailer trucks, the smog, the halting traffic and flashing red, yellow or blue lights.  Maybe some enlightened soul named it the HIGH WAY because right in the middle of the chaos, the sizzling asphalt – amidst the clamor of people rushing towards or away from home, rises life, and it is sweet.