Episode 1 – A Guided Meditation has been posted and is a brief guided meditation on the practice of presence and breathing meditation. Future episodes will cover various spiritual topics and other related material. You can access the podcast page through this link……….

http://awakeninthenow.podomatic.com/

Over the last few years struggle, chaos and upheaval have permeated all aspects of my life. It has been very difficult and even terrifying at times. I’ve lost my job, my living space, relationships, many aspects of my identity and most of my material possessions. However I created this experience with the simple but powerful intention to be free, truly free at all levels. All this difficultly came about as I confronted my doubts, fears and attachments and learned often the hard way to let go of all that is not my essence. I have no regrets, I embrace the pain with the pleasure, the bad with the good. When you take away the dualistic labels everything is an expression of the divine and from that perspective one can experience true equanimity, accepting and embracing what is in each moment. Flowing freely with life. Co-creating your world with the full creative force of the universe behind you.

I’ve begun to realize that I really am complete in this moment as I am. My home is the eternal NOW so I am always at home no matter where I am. All living beings are my brothers and sisters so I am always with my family, never alone.

I no longer believe my beliefs because they are just thoughts with no inherent reality. I don’t need to believe what I think. I can just honor my thoughts as I honor the passing weather and honor the thoughts of others without being threatened by them. When you don’t identify with your thoughts as who you are or as an absolute truth you become free of the prison of your mind. The mind can then become a more fluid tool to use to interact with the world of form and create within it.

There is no need to fear, to worry or to suffer. There is no need to figure anything out. Life can be quite effortless if we can let go of trying to control it and live from a higher level of consciousness which is our true nature. Flow with life rather than resisting it. Co-create with the divine. See the dream as a dream and realize yourself as the dreamer. This isn’t something to think about. Its not something to believe or another interesting philosophy. Its not something to know or to attain in the future. It is and always has been right here right now, it is what you already are. You are free, you are divine, right now.

Will you choose to step into that? I hope so, I sure am.

As I’ve walked my spiritual path I’ve engaged in many practices, some more effective than others. I’ve found that the simplest techniques are usually the most effective because in my view the aim of the spiritual path is very simple and immediate. That aim is to realize our true nature, to return to wakefulness, to awaken from the dream of separate/dualistic life. On the path, we can get distracted by looking for the truth somewhere “out there” but I think the truth is right under our noses. Its right here, right now in this moment and it is life itself. It cannot really be spoken of but it can be lived. No special knowledge, talent or preparation is needed because it involves being what you already are at the deepest level. All that’s needed is to remember and to clear away anything that obscures what we truly are, that is, anything that distracts one from this moment. We just have to be interested in this process of awakening so that we are wiling to give it our full attention. The five steps I describe below are a tool I have used lately to help me return to my true nature when I forget.

Step 1 – Become Present

For me this is the core spiritual practice and it is analogous to living an awakened life. We cannot avoid pain or hold on to pleasure as each is but a transitory state, change is a universal law. Although as human beings we will experience pain and lose that which brings us pleasure, the suffering we most often experience along with it is optional. Suffering arises when we perceive reality through the thought forms of the mind and mistake those thought forms for reality. We create thoughts and weave them into stories about how things should be and when life doesn’t conform to these stories we suffer. The mind stories most of us create are usually centered either in the past or the future, both of which exist only as thoughts in our minds. We live in our memories of the past and feel guilt, regret, sadness and anger about how things may have unfolded. We live in our imagination of the future hoping for things to be better or fearing what might happen to us. We even begin to identify with our stories to the point where we fear letting them go because we can’t imagine life without them, they become familiar and there is a kind of comfort in the known. In all of this we miss the reality of the present moment.

Step 1 is letting go of the past and the future and entering the Now, which is all that really exists, it is stepping outside of time, the realm of suffering. Step 1 is bringing our attention from the mind and its stories to the body and the feeling sense and feeling our connection to what is happening right now right here. The Now is where life is and when we bring our attention fully to the Now something magical happens. We connect to the power of life and the “source” of our being. To make this connection with the moment however we must surrender and accept what is. If we don’t like what is happening we will resist the moment and imagine into the future for a time when we will like what’s happening more. This cuts us off from life and from our true power and causes us to again live in a mind created fantasy. If we look at the present moment as a reflection of the Divine then whatever is happening is an expression of it even if its painful or unpleasant. Surrendering to what is, is something that happens in the moment and does not mean we condone negative events or experiences and it does not mean we are passive about changing things but it does mean before we work for change we pause and surrender and accept what is so we can work for change with the power of life behind us.

Step 2 – Go Back to Step 1

Step 1 is the key and there can be a great deal of resistance at first to really entering the Now because it can involve feeling unpleasant emotions or confronting painful stories. When you are really present and aware in the Now you begin to see how you create your suffering with your mind. Many of us are not used to practicing “being” and the tendency can be to jump right into action without first grounding. However without our connection to the present we will get lost in the mind and our action will not have much power or meaning behind it because it doesn’t originate from a very deep level. This grounding connection to “source” is the key to an awakened life and the practice is to make our home in the Now.

Step 3 – Take Action from Presence

When we are ok with what is and grounded in the present we can take the most appropriate action for any given situation usually without needing to figure anything out. Our natural wisdom is available in the Now which is a level of consciousness where we can experience absolute clarity. The direction of our life as well as what we should do are already clear at this level, we need only be quiet enough to listen to this inner wisdom. The more experience we have “being” in a state of presence the easier it will be to “trust” the power of our true nature and begin to rely on it for our peace of mind, our guidance and our safety and security. If we can find these things within we will be less dependent on our outer world being a certain way. Ironically when we are already in touch with peace and joy within the outer world will more readily reflect them back because the outer is a reflection of the inner.

Step 4 – Receive

To live a life in the power of presence means to first ground in the moment and only then take action. Living in the moment requires us to live in a very open way because we cannot tap into abundance if we are closed to the limitless possibilities that the present moment offers. It involves embracing the unknown which is what many of us fear most because living in the unknown means living with limitless possibility. Trusting the unknown comes from seeing things clearly in the moment and flowing with life without resistance.

Step 5 – Go Back to Step 1

The point here is that there is a need to keep returning to presence over and over again. We recognize that we are lost in the mind either because we feel upset or we feel confused. In that moment of recognition a choice becomes possible and we can, with intention and gentleness, return to the present moment. Over time we live in presence more and more until there is no more suffering and imprisonment in the mind, we are free.

]]> http://www.awakeninthenow.com/2010/07/the-five-steps/feed/ 1 http://www.awakeninthenow.com/2010/05/the-power-of-awareness-and-attention/ http://www.awakeninthenow.com/2010/05/the-power-of-awareness-and-attention/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 21:59:02 +0000 bodhidude http://www.awakeninthenow.com/?p=1306

In the last couple of years I’ve moved around a great deal living in half a dozen living situations. In the process I’ve been looking at how I create security, stability and a feeling a safety in my life. During this time I had very few of the usual things most people associate with security and stability, things like a house, a car, a job, a long term relationship or money. I’ve had all of these things in the past but in my process of transformation had to temporarily let them go one by one. My intention in letting them go for a while was not because they are negative or problematic but rather to look at my attachment to them and my motivations in having them in my life. You see, all of these so called sources of security have also been sources of suffering for me. They have caused suffering because they are unreliable, temporary and fail to meet my expectations. One thing we can say for certain about external sources of security is that they are temporary, they do not last forever and they change, often in ways we don’t like.

In letting these things go for a time and moving around so much while unraveling my identity (who I took myself to be) it became more and more clear to me that the only way I could find lasting security, stability and peace of mind was to look inward. However when you initially look inward you find the same problem as with the outward sources of security. Thoughts, emotions, beliefs and states of mind are as temporary and unreliable as money, jobs and relationships. If your stability, your grounding is based on thoughts and emotions you are in no better shape. I found this out the hard way but having exhausted these possibilities I began to look deeper.

At a deeper level I started to get in touch with something I could not describe very well with words. It is something many spiritual teachers call the witness or the watcher. In some forms of meditation the instruction is to simply watch or notice what is happening, both internally and externally. You hear a sound you notice it, you feel an emotion you notice that, you start thinking and you notice that. That’s it, you simply notice everything. In this process you naturally get distracted and start fantasizing, when you realize this you simple return to noticing without any kind of judgment on yourself. This seems really simplistic at first and often difficult because its not so easy to just notice without getting caught up in thoughts, feelings, fantasies or external events. But that process of noticing opens up a deeper level of consciousness, awareness.

When we feel angry if we can notice that we are angry and maintain a small degree of awareness, that awareness is the part of us that is not caught up in the anger. If we were fully in our anger, taken over by it, we could not notice it. The witness requires separating ourselves in a way from our experience. We can see it as a temporary passing state of mind and we then have the choice of not reacting from it, instead we can just feel the anger and let it pass through us. With practice awareness becomes something we can draw on for security and stability because it is always available no matter what is happening externally or what our state of mind is internally. Turning our attention to awareness has an effect of dissolving our problems because when we take our attention away from a problem and focus on awareness we no longer create the problematic story. We simply see things are they are from a calm peaceful state of mind so we can accept or we can see what needs to be done and do it without struggle. This is not a passive way of being but it asks us to pause and get in touch with awareness so that if we do take action in response to a situation the action is not a re-action but rather a conscious in the moment response to what is needed. This tends to produce a very different result compared to reacting to a situation.

Attention may be the most powerful tool we have to shape our experience. Most of our experience is a direct result of where we put our attention, where we don’t put it as well as the quality of that attention. If a friend of mine is supposed to meet me for coffee and she doesn’t show up and my mind goes into a story that she blew me off to hang out with another guy my attention is now going into creating a problem and the suffering that goes along with it. If instead I choose to put my attention on the raw experience of the moment I may find that I’m perfectly ok without her showing up, I’m drinking my coffee and enjoying the moment. My friend may have blown me off but much more likely something came up for her. It is interesting to look at your problems and what makes you suffer and see how your attention plays into that, how much drama is your mind creating and how many of your unpleasant emotions emerge from that drama?

In an even deeper sense, awareness is a direct connection to life or source. In awareness we are in touch with our true divine being. When one is fully present in the moment with attention focused on awareness miracles happen. Life is spacious and free and the natural abundance that we are all a part of can flow in and out of our life. There are no problems here, only challenges. There is no struggle here, effort is expended freely and flows with circumstances producing just what is needed. We all have the capability to experience this awakened state if we practice with awareness and directing our attention consciously. We are already free if we can just re-learn to live in that freedom……..

A man was walking in the forest and came upon a monk sitting under a tree.
The man asked the monk, who are you sir?
The monk replied, I am.
I see said the man and how is it you look so happy and joyful?
I have discovered a treasure said the monk.
Well sir, I am a poor man and am distraught with my life, won’t you share this treasure with me?
The monk said, of course my dear fellow, please sit down here next to me.
The man sat down and the monk continued to sit looking peaceful and serene, smiling.
Finally growing impatient the man said, sir, when will you share this treasure with me?
The monk said, I share it with you now, will you not accept it?
I mean no disrespect but you have only sat here next to me, I have seen no treasure.
Ah said the monk, first you must put down your burden.
But sir, I have nothing, I carry no burden.
Perhaps you have carried it so long you have forgotten said the monk.
Well then, what must I do said the man?
Suddenly the monk slapped the man in the face.
Ouch! cried the man, why did you do that?
I was trying to get your attention said the monk.
Well you did, that hurt.
My apologies, do you hear that soothing sound in the background asked the monk?
Yes, it is the stream at the edge of the forest.
Indeed, and do you smell that sweet fragrance in the air?
Oh yes, the blossoms of the tree have just opened said the man.
Lovely and do you feel the warmth of the sun on your face?
Yes, it is quite a pleasant day at that.
Would you like some of these grapes asked the monk?
Thank you sir, they are quite delicious.
The monk bowed then got up and began to make his way down the road.
The man asked, sir, where are you going?
Now that you have laid down your burden and accepted the treasure I am going back to my hut to take my afternoon nap said the monk.
But sir, what shall I do now?
Leave your burden and enjoy the treasure and joy will never leave you no matter what happens……….

This morning was the full moon in Virgo/Pisces and last night when the moon as out in all her radiance I tried a new form of full moon practice. I usually do a special practice on the full moon which includes meditation and channeling the powerful energy with intention but last nights practice opened me up to the energy of the Goddess at a new level.

The moon is traditionally associated with the Goddess in many nature religions and such an association feels quite natural to me. When the moon is full the power of the Goddess is manifested outwardly at its greatest intensity so it is a powerful time to open to her energy. For me the Goddess is the personification of the Divine Feminine within each of us, of the nurturing energy of the natural world, the Yin energy and of the creative life giving force of the universe. It has been incredibly healing for me especially as a man to cultivate a personal relationship with the Goddess thereby awakening the Divine Feminine within me and allowing it to guide and nurture me. This has begun to transform my relationship with women as well because having this connection with the Divine Feminine means I don’t have to unconsciously try to get it from them. I can be more free to honor women as manifestations of the Goddess and offer them love and adoration from a more balanced empowered place.

My practice last night involved going outside under the full moon and reaching up to her in salutation and opening myself to her energy. I imagined channeling the energy of the full moon from above through me while imagining grounding myself into the earth thereby creating a circuit of flowing energy. I reached up to the moon and then moved my hands down to my heart drawing down the moon and the power of the Goddess into my heart, welcoming her into my heart and my life. From that place I allowed myself to breath in the darkness, suffering, pain and fear of the world into the radiant moon at my heart and then breath out the loving, compassionate nurturing energy of the Goddess and see the world and all within it transformed by her loving presence. After a few rounds of this and some giving of thanks and praise to the Lady I then grounded the energy into the earth seeing the planet as healed and transformed. This was a powerful practice because I felt the energy at my heart very powerfully and felt the presence of the Lady more than I ever have before.

The cycles of the moon have become a primary guiding force in my life which feels like a way of reconnecting with the natural rhythms that so many of us have lost touch with. Our tribal brothers and sisters in the past lived by these natural cycles and created their lives based on them and in harmony with them. What would our world look like if we fully were to return to this kind of harmonious way of life? I imagine it would be nothing short of magical. May you find your connection with the Lady and rejoice in it.

Praise to the Goddess in all her forms……….Blessed Be!

For a quick personal full moon practice click here: http://www.mooncircles.com/fullmoonritual_print.html

Have you ever had a period in your life where you felt stuck and overcome by your habitual patterns unable to break free? That has been my life over the last few months and it seemed like no matter what I tried to do it would not work out. Either I was too confused to know where to direct my energy or when I did have a direction no matter how much effort I put forth it would still be unsuccessful. I felt a deepening frustration and an increasing darkness overtaking me and nothing was working to break free of it despite much effort. I have a pretty strong spiritual practice but it did not seem to be able to penetrate whatever it was I was struggling with. So as I do when I’m feeling confused or lost I asked for guidance from the universe, from my guides. Usually that involves putting out a request for help and then opening to receiving the guidance in whatever form it might take. In this instance I received a response immediately as if it had been right there waiting all along. The response was Daime, a form of Ayahausca from the Santo Daime tradition originating of Brazil.

I’ve worked with mushrooms as a tool for healing in the past with positive results and experimented with various hallucinogens. Although I knew about Daime I never felt a calling to work with it until this request for help. A friend of mine involved with the church facilitated my connection and I inquired into the local Santo Daime group and arranged to attend a ceremony. In the time leading up to the ceremony I felt more and more anxious and found that I was distancing myself from others including my own community. I didn’t really have the capacity to maintain any connections and felt more and more isolated and lost as if things were really spiraling out of control. It was at the height of this that I connected with the Daime and I had no idea of the powerful process I was about to engage.

I was fortunate to have a couple of people I know present who are involved in the church and so I arrived with the intention of healing and finding some clarity in all the confusion. When I drank the first cup of Daime I was struck by the powerful taste and the intensity of it in my system. It took about 30 minutes before I felt any effect but when it came on I had the experience of my reality begin to get less and less real almost as if it were melting. This reached a climax where I experienced sheer terror as I felt I was losing touch with everything around me including my body and my identity. It felt like I would completely loss myself and might not ever come back if I let go into it. I touched this place briefly which I can only describe as feeling like death and then I was pulled back into a place of raw emotion. I cried and cried and let out an immense wave of feeling as sweat poured out of my body. I’ve had an ongoing process of getting to my emotions and letting them flow freely but the Daime got me to them immediately. This went on for about an hour and then subsided and it was time for the second cup of Daime.

When I drank the second cup the effect came on almost immediately as I was still in a tender state. This time I felt as if I wanted to throw up but I resisted that with everything I had. I had the sense there was something in my belly which needed to be released but I simply could not get myself to let go and release it. I suffered with that and struggled with it for the better part of the next 2 hours agonizing over a small plastic lined pale then laying down in exhaustion while the ceremony continued with singing and dancing. I felt leveled by my resistance and the fight of the part of me that did not want to let go. Another person at the ceremony had an intense experience of purging what sounded like a demon and it deeply effected me triggering my fear at what might be wanting to come through me. I could not move and the guardians (helpers) of the ceremony compassionately checked in on me and gave me suggestions from time to time but allowed me to be where I was, I felt supported but not pressured. As I lay there I listened to the hymns being sung in Portuguese by the group, the hymns of the Santo Daime are beautiful and I felt held by the positive loving energy of the group. Every once in a while the singing would move into English and the words seemed to speak right to where I was and my personal struggle. Later a friend of mine came over and held space for me and suggested I try to get up and join the group which I eventually did. Moving back into the energy field of the ceremony helped me free myself a bit and I felt bathed in light, love and devotion. When the ceremony finally ended I found myself wishing it had continued longer because the energy and the people were so powerfully positive and healing.

The next day I did not feel myself and my gut felt incredibly agitated which at first I thought was due to the effects of the Daime on my digestive system. However as the day went on I sensed more and more that the process was far from over. It felt like there was ‘something’ in my gut. I met with a friend and we spoke of the experience and as the evening went on I felt a draw to do meditation, practice specifically a Tibetan practice I do known as Feeding your Demons (see my article Feeding your Demons for a description of the practice). As I sat down to do the practice I felt into my stomach and let the intense feeling there take shape in front of me where it manifested as a demon that wanted to destroy me. I let myself embody this demon and acted out its anger and rage which was terrifying but liberating at the same time. Underneath the intense anger of the demon was fear and what it really wanted was comfort. As I accepted and acknowledged and comforted this figure another wave of intense emotion flowed out and I could finally get in touch with compassion for this cut off part of myself, this part of me that represented a very old unhealed wound. It transformed into an infant which I was able hold and protect. This was a profoundly healing practice.

After this I went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night feeling like demons were pulling me out of bed. The room felt dark and ominous when I awoke but rather than giving into fear I got up to do another round of practice. I did the Feeding your Demons practice again allowing the intense energy in my gut to manifest and this time it was an even darker figure, the Devil himself. This was very unsettling and challenging to deal with as you might imagine and the Devil reminded me that I had toyed with the dark arts in the past as an ignorant and desperate teenager and that despite my moving away from that and walking the spiritual path he was still here within me. Despite all my work I had never had the courage to go back and deal with this dark energy. Well now I had no choice and even felt relieved to finally be getting to it because I knew then that this is what had been blocking me. The Devil said he wanted to own my soul but when pressed deeper he said he really wanted to be accepted as a part of me and to be loved. With the realization that this figure was not something separate but actually was a part of me I allowed myself to embrace him and accept him offering him the love and attention he wanted. At this point he transformed into the figure of a Native American Warrior and this figure said that he represented the power and strength that I had buried in the darkness so long ago, power that I would need to walk my path from here. It is interesting to note that the Daime ceremony took place at a VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) hall and at the end of the ceremony a member offered a Native American chant to honor the fallen warriors. This chant stayed with me in working with my warrior figure as a way to call on that power and heal the warrior energy (see Becoming the Peaceful Warrior).

The figure of the Devil represents for me some of my deepest darkest fears and the Daime helped to bring that to the surface so I could work with it and heal and integrate it. I imagine we all have our own versions of inner darkness and demons we must face and ultimately heal although everyone’s may not be as dramatic as mine. Coming through this process I have felt far more empowered and at peace and although I know there is still much work to do with this inner darkness, I now feel like its moving and I’m able to access it. I have incredible gratitude for the gift of the Santo Daime and will undoubtedly do much more work with them. The Daime is a powerful medicine which has manifested in the world at a time when deep healing is essential to the larger transformation we are all going through.

I’ve written about the warrior archetype and the way it is played out in a destructive way in our society today (See “The Warrior Archetype and the Reemergence of the Goddess“). Lately I’ve become more aware of the importance of this powerful archetype both for myself and the collective. You see for much of my life I’ve embodied the negative warrior both within and without. In my view, the negative warrior is characterized by aggression,  defensiveness and destructiveness. Underlying this is vulnerability and fear, a soft underbelly that needs to be protected at all costs. The negative warrior feels isolated and separate and at war with the world as well as in a constant state of inner conflict. Aggression and defensiveness are the weapons of the negative warrior as he fights to protect an inner core of painful vulnerable feeling from anything that would threaten to expose it fearing that would bring his destruction. This inner core of feeling may have been created early in life by trauma that was never healed or by the experience of being punished for openly expressing emotion causing it to be repressed out of fear of that punishment as is so common in our culture.

My wounds of this life began in early childhood with my parents divorce and then by difficult experiences in school around moving a great deal and not really being able to establish lasting relationships. I responded by protecting myself from these painful experiences by embodying the strong macho male figure and this served me well for a time. I played out being the trouble maker and misfit in school resulting in my dropping out and joining the Army. My experience in the military solidified the negative warrior role by hammering in the taboo of feeling any emotions except for lust and anger. Any expression of true emotion elicited a violent and repressive reaction from those around me as I’m sure it threatened the fragile containment of their own feelings. Participating in the destructive purpose of the military gave me a channel for what I was holding inside and further deepened the trauma and pent up emotion adding shame to the mix. Shame at being a willing party to such a destructive enterprise. This is something I’m still working to heal today some 20 years later. After the military I spent several years studying martial arts and embraced the stoic warrior figure so well symbolized by the Samurai. Embodying the warrior in this way lead to isolation and being cut off from love, community and inner peace. For me it became untenable and began to break down my health which initiated a process of self discovery, spiritual practice and healing.

In my healing process I have become aware that my aversion to playing out the negative warrior has resulted in living in a disempowered state because the warrior archetype has a positive side in which it represents our personal power, courage and passion. As a man it also represents the divine aspect of my masculine nature. My initial process was to work through the layers of anger, aggression and defensiveness to even have any conscious experience of my feelings and to allow myself to truly connect with anyone on a meaningful level. In working with this aspect for almost 2 decades I’ve gotten in touch with my emotional being which has been possible by reconnecting with my feminine side. My feminine side had been so brutally repressed, much as it has been in society at large, that I have needed to develop not only a daily practice of getting in touch with my feelings but to develop a personal relationship with the Goddess, the personification of the Divine Feminine. This has been a powerfully healing experience and is transforming my relationships and opening me up to life in ways I never imagined possible. Living with an open heart is scary, painful and chaotic at first but it is living in a way that is truly alive, for feeling is the experience of life force flowing through the body. Being able to relate to someone emotionally without defensiveness, connecting with the beauty and peace of nature and openly feeling the suffering of others with compassion are just some of the gifts the Divine Feminine has offered me.

Despite this powerful process of healing, I’ve felt something is missing. Lately I’ve realized that I’ve dropped the warrior altogether and so am missing his power and courage which explains why in being emotionally open I’ve also been equally terrified and lost and all too ready to fall back into the old patterns. I’m having to go back and revisit some of my trauma around the warrior and some my experiences in the military in order to release those painful feelings. In doing so, my intention is to reconnect with the warrior in the form of the peaceful warrior. The peaceful warrior is fully connected and grounded in the divine feminine. He lives a life with an open heart and the fearlessness of a warrior in the face of pain and suffering. He has courage in relationship to openly connect and express his feelings while also firmly setting boundaries. He realizes the true battle is to be fought within in confronting his demons and ultimately taking the journey through the depths of the unconscious bringing the light of awareness to the darkness. The warrior knows that he creates his own safety rather than seeking it without and the world is only as dangerous as he believes it to be or as safe as he allows it to be. The peaceful warrior is wise and grounded but powerfully decisive and willing to take risks when called for.

I think the symbol of the peaceful warrior is essential to our collective transformation because we cannot awaken as long as we are fighting a battle with the present moment and our authentic experience whatever it may be. The negative warrior’s defensiveness and aggression becomes the separation that keeps us from our power, creativity and joy. At the same time we need the peaceful warrior’s strength and courage to make it through this time of incredibly fast and intense change. Only a warrior can traverse the path that leads to a completely new world. We will need all our strength and courage to make it through the times ahead as well as a direct connection to source or spirit which is our real guidance and clarity and the source of our power. When the warrior acts from deepest intuition (The Divine Feminine) his actions are powerfully creative rather than destructive. The process of transforming the negative warrior into the peaceful warrior is a perfect metaphor for the transformation so many of us are experiencing whether we are male or female. This continues to be my work……….

I’ve been doing so much inner work lately that not only can it feel overwhelming but it can get pretty depressing at times even though confronting and integrating inner darkness and pain is necessary for healing and freedom. However I can get lost in the darkness and unconsciousness which is a risk in doing inner work and represents going to an extreme and becoming invested in the darkness that one is trying to illuminate and heal. At this point we can become cut off from the very element which will heal the darkness, Joy. I want to distinguish here between happiness and joy. I consider happiness to mean a good mood, basically feeling good usually in relation to pleasant conditions whether within or without. Happiness from this perspective is a temporary surface mind state. Joy on the other hand is much deeper than happiness, it is a blissful state that emanates from the core of our being, a reflection of our true nature. Joy is not dependent on conditions because it emerges from a place beyond conditions or the details of our life situation. Therefore joy is always accessible even when happiness is not. It is a profound sense of empowerment, calm and ok-ness even in the midst of chaos and turmoil.

For me, cultivating joy requires being in a state of presence because joy exists only in the present moment, the now. Being in a state of presence requires surrender because it is impossible to be fully in the now if you are resisting it at the same time. If you try to be present but at the same time don’t want what is happening in the present moment maybe because it is unpleasant you create a state of inner conflict with what is. Surrendering says, I may not like what is happening but I accept that it is whats happening. By surrendering and entering a state of presence joy becomes accessible. What can be an obstacle for many including myself is that when you surrender and become fully present you may experience pain before you can get to joy. The pain may be emotion, trauma or unpleasant physical sensations that are just under the surface and have been subtly (or not so subtly) repressed or avoided. So presence requires a willingness to feel whatever is there with openness, a truly open heart, without trying to make it stop or go away. This is freeing because we don’t have to fix our pain we just need to openly witness it and allow it to be there. Most of us have been conditioned to avoid unpleasant feelings and to do whatever is necessary to avoid them which not only creates trauma and sickness as the unpleasant feelings build and become entrenched but it cuts us off from the source of healing, our true nature, joy.

Joy is a reflection of pure consciousness or life force and when we get in touch with it we can channel it into our lives in powerful ways. Joy can infuse everything we do, every relationship and every word. We then become conduits for love and joy to flow into the collective helping others access it within themselves, joy is contagious. You could consider joy a perspective and when you are in a state of joy the world looks different. Life somehow seems magical, synchronicity is everywhere, people and opportunities are drawn to you magnetically. The feeling of joy is really more of an energy, a power and that power can be creatively channeled into whatever you do so that your actions produce results that are much greater than you could have imagined. The power of joy is the power of living fully connected to the present moment and to life itself, being in a surrendered empowered flow. In my view this is the greatest thing we can do for ourselves and the greatest gift we can offer the world. When one person touches joy it ripples through the hearts of every living being. So lets cultivate joy together and free ourselves completely, right now!

I love trees, I always have. I love the natural world but for some reason trees have always had a special meaning and a special power for me. The reverence and appreciation I feel for them can be intense and lately I’ve made it a daily practice to connect and work with them. They are a great teacher for me and they demonstrate and symbolize how to live in the world with grace, groundedness, openness and connectedness. They help me move energy by connecting me with the Earth and acting as a channel for its energy. They comfort me when I’m feeling lost and help me get to my feelings. They provide a natural temple to connect with Spirit, the Goddess and the power of the Earth. Its really too bad they aren’t appreciated more for what they have to offer people as well as what we can do for them because I think we are meant to work together.

Trees are an amazing spiritual symbol and they represent grounded connected life very well. If we consider how a tree exists this becomes clear. A tree is dependent on the world around it, it needs light, water, air and soil to grow and prosper. Yet if a tree is to survive it must put down strong roots deep into the ground while reaching up into the sky to the sun so it must be grounded in the Earth while open to the sky. If it is not well grounded a strong wind can topple it or even blow it away but if well grounded a tree can and must withstand storms and the tumult of the outside world. It must also be flexible so as not to break in the wind, a balance of strong grounding and flexibility.

Humans too must be well grounded in themselves, the Earth and in Spirit if they are to withstand the trials of life. If we are not well grounded we tend to be swept up in the circumstances and emotional drama of our lives and this is particularly true in these intense times. However if we are well grounded, we find our stability within and we are not swept away even in the most difficult of times. Like the tree we must also be flexible and not be so rigid in our groundedness that we snap. We flow with the changing current of life without being overwhelmed by it. Being grounded and flexible is what trees symbolize for me.

The tree has also been used by many cultures as a powerful symbol, an example of which is the Tree of Life. Here the tree is used to symbolize life itself in all its complexities and interconnections. A similar concept is that of the World Tree where the tree is used as a cosmological symbol of the underworld, the Earth and the Heavens.

Trees can be a powerful tool for healing because they can help us ground and move emotional energy very effectively. When I’ve felt stuck in my “stuff” lately I’ve taken a trip to the park to do tree practice. I’ll find a strong tree I feel drawn to and touch it with both hands while planting my feet firmly on the ground next to it. I will then ask the tree for help in moving my stuck energy. If it feels right to continue I visualize energy from the earth coming up through my feet and into me and flowing out through my hands into the tree and back into the earth creating a circuit. The tree has a way of helping me make this connection and moving the energy. I usually find emotion comes up rather easily when I do this whether it be sadness, anger or some other feeling I had been holding onto. Once energy has moved I will quiet my mind and feel the energy of the tree and the earth, which is very calming. I conclude by giving the tree my gratitude and sending it love and light.

I think this practice is a powerful one because we can be so disconnected from nature in our modern world yet we are a product of nature. I wonder how much of our mental and emotional pain is made so much worse because we have lost this natural connection that is so healing. The drama and trauma of human life tends to obstruct life energy so it becomes things like depression, anxiety, anger and confusion. To Mother Nature this is all just life energy and so in reconnecting with her she can help us remove the obstructions and free this energy returning it to source while allowing it to flow through us in a way that allows us to live fully connected with life.

In the sacred rites and rituals of old, particularly the Druids, trees represented the place of spiritual worship, the sacred grove. They were a temple to the Divine. I have come to see it that way myself and consider the park near my house a temple and place of spiritual practice. The paths are the sacred halls of the temple and the trees living manifestations of the Goddess as well as access points to the Earth energy we are all a part of.

Reconnecting with the Earth in this way is not only healing for us but for the planet as well. If we can return all the disconnected energy we have created in separation, that energy can be used consciously to heal the planet. The environmental crisis we are experiencing today is a manifestation of this separation. In seeing ourselves as separate from the planet we have harmed it greatly while not realizing we are directly harming ourselves at the same time. Is it any wonder our culture is so sick and dysfunctional? We are not separate from the planet; we are a conscious part of it and with our consciousness acting in harmony with the planet, it and we can be completely healed together. Technology, science and rational solutions will not save us because the problem is much more simple and basic than that and the solution is right here right now if we can just let go, listen, feel and realize our interconnectedness.