The most sacred place dwells within our heart, where dreams are born and secrets sleep, a mystical refuge of darkness and light, fear and conquest, adventure and discovery, challenge and transformation. Our heart speaks for our soul every moment while we are alive. Listen… as the whispering beat repeats: be…gin, be…gin, be…gin. It’s really that simple. Just begin… again. Royce Addington

If you’ve ever observed a praying mantis you’ve undoubtedly experienced the saturated stillness of a creature whose every movement seems to embody deliberate choice.  In China, the mantis has long been honored for her mindful movements. The mantis never makes a move unless she is 100% positive it is the right thing for her to do. She moves with her inner alignment.

What if you modeled the mantis and her message of conscious partnership? Surely your choices would be boldly empowered if you paused and experienced your stillness, feeling for the alivening alignment of your mind, body and essence. What if you were mindful, like the mantis, in the expression of this moment? What if every moment were experienced as an opportunity to choose again, to begin anew?

The invitation to surrender the surface assumptions encountered on the adventure are infinite. Every moment is an invitation to relinquish separation. Every moment is an opportunity to begin again. The infinite essence of life gives second chances. It’s here,  it’s now. Say yes!

Image: Happy Birthday Baby Mantis, Woodley Wonder Works

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Conscious Energy Shift (8m)

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Every challenge is an opportunity for a miracle. Marianne Williamson

All problems that you encounter are essentially one problem: separation from the awareness of your True Essence. When you know who you really are you don’t fall into any pre-ordained roles or ‘suffer’ at the hands of destiny. You encounter every moment with full presence and engagement, you dynamically partner with life to shift your awareness into more. You clear the cobwebs of your thinking and own the power of your sensing.

Every problem is an opportunity to experience a shift. A shift from thinking to sensing; from feeling to knowing. Let the ball drop. Let the miracle rearrange your thinking and realign your perception to what’s true. When you suffer, you are not aligned with your True Essence. Experience the spiral of ever awakening awareness, where more ripples you into the miraculous paradigms of alivening partnership.

This is a magical time to be alive. This is the time we have all been waiting for. Everything is possible, if you will but open to the dynamic nature of your being. As you own the brilliance and beauty of your True Essence, a new world arises and a New Earth is born.

Image: Zen, Kewl

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Conscious Energy Shift (12m)

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The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Joseph Campbell

Seeking for answers outside of yourself only serves to delay the true adventure of self awareness. It also diminishes your discernment and your power to shift your perception, which ultimately affects how you view the world.

If the inner terrain is unfamiliar territory it can be disconcerting to navigate. Yet this inner darkness is laden with treasures yet undiscovered. As you bring the light of your awareness into focus, it unearths what’s true about the very essence of your luminous nature.

The most difficult choice is to enter the unfamiliar depths and surrender to the immensity of your Essence. There is SO much of you yearning to be. In this inner chasm of potential, the light you bring helps to shape potential into the now.

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Image: Abbaye d’Orval, Jucanils

Conscious Energy Shift (11m)

Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself. Erich Fromm

We’ve all been programmed that too much focus on the self is tantamount to selfishness and something to be avoided at all costs. Most major religions praise selfless giving, women are inculcated from birth that to give is their natural role, parents are trained to believe in self  sacrifice.

Despite all this early training, the self when denied shows up in not such a glorious array: sometimes self centered or self indulgent or even robed in self righteousness. There were 216 entries of words with the root of ‘self’ in Merriam Webster. Apparently the denial of self does not render you self-less.

How do you give birth to the self, as per Fromm’s suggestion? Simply by nourishing the essence of who you are. Your essence is the alivening spark of infinite divinity and intelligence that permeates your presence and powers your soul. It’s not even your gifts, strengths and talents, though your essence can certainly illuminate those too. Your essence is the spark of life that is your inheritance. There is nothing that you need to do, prove or earn. It is your natural birthright.

The simplest way to birth the self? Honor it, bless it, acknowledge it, live it, be it. Your essence is a dynamic, alivening force. When you unleash your idea of what it is, it is then free to become the gloriously infinite brilliance of this moment. Why? Because it IS!

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Image: Self Portrait, Zach Dischner

Conscious Energy Shift (10m)

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Spiritual evolution occurs as the result of removing obstacles and not actually acquiring anything new. Devotion enables surrender of the mind’s vanities and cherished illusions so that it progressively becomes more free and more open to the light of Truth. David R. Hawkins

Last year I went to see Zen Master Genpo Merzel, of Big Mind, in New York City. He started off the day with the following inquiry, “How do you feed a hungry ghost?”

According to Wikepdia, hungry ghost is a Western translation of an Eastern phrase representing beings who are driven by intense emotional needs in an animalistic way. In Buddhism, Hungry Ghosts are ghosts only in the sense of not being fully alive; not fully capable of living and appreciating what the moment has to offer.

I was struck by the never ending yearning that I associated with this ‘hungry ghost’ experience. No matter how much you feed this aspect of yourself, it is never satisfied. It is always hungry. This ceaseless wanting only serves to emphasize the lack. The infinite cycle of wanting and still needing more is daunting and disconcerting. Notice if there is any aspect of your world that shadows this sensation. It may not be a full on hunger, but you can sense the pattern of not feeling quite satisfied and still wanting. And the more you want, the more you need to fill the vacuum of wanting.

When you find yourself in this cycle of wanting it’s a sure sign that you are in  a limited perspective. Know that you have disconnected from the awareness of your boundless being, your source of infinite supply. Relief is an instant away. Breathe, relax, expand. Feel the lightness of your less-ness.  The coming into awareness of who you are is not about gaining, seeking or finding something. It is a dropping away of the ‘not you,’ where nothing’s missing and there’s more.

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Image: Water Girl, Jody McNary Photography

Conscious Energy Shift (10m)

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Realize that now, in this moment of time, you are creating. You are creating your next moment based on what you are feeling and thinking. That is what’s real. Doc Childre

Imagine that you’re sitting in a private screening room, about to watch a film. There’s a vintage projector at the back staring at the naked screen.  Suddenly the light beams across the film and the screen comes alive with the imagery.

Imagine the world as a naked screen, and your thoughts and feelings as the film projected by the living light into your world. It’s no different, really. It’s just that most people on the planet walk around as if the naked screen is what’s real. It’s only a misunderstanding, corrected by consciousness.

What if you chose to change the film, whenever your filter of experience was a ‘less than’ perspective? What if you chose to ‘project’ lightness of being and freedom of essence? What if you chose to edit the experiences that diminished you and replayed the ones that brought your brilliance into being? What if you chose to create the new, again and again?

It’s not that you’re rigging the game, it’s that reality is flexible. And so are you.

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Conscious Energy Shift (9m)

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The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth. Ram Dass

The inner world has always held an irresistible allure. While friends played with dolls and ‘dress up,’ I lay on my bed traversing inner dimensions and creating sacred space. As schoolmates whipped themselves into a frenzy over sleepovers, I withdrew to the solace and surrender of inner imaginings.

It’s no surprise then that seeking for truth was a path that beckoned. Though I was raised a Catholic, I explored many other faiths and points of view. Later, I mastered various energy modalities, initially as a pathway to physical and emotional healing and later as a tool for transformation. These are some of the insights I garnered on the adventure, that freed my essence:

1. Come to know for yourself. Outsourcing your power to a belief system, even well intentioned, diminishes your discernment. When I did the Last Satsang with Zen Master Dolano, she would have us ‘investigate’ and come to our own ‘proof’ on her teaching point. Anything that’s ‘organized’- whether it’s religion or a healing system – should be explored for yourself.
2. Take responsibility for your own experience. It’s comforting to have a shared experience. It feels good when others reflect your point of view. Sometimes, though, the most powerful thing you can do to ‘own your energy’ is to voice what you know to be so, even though it may be unpopular. Many religions and movements began this way, before falling into set rules. Often, it is in setting off on your own path that what is true finds you.
3. Trust your feeling, more than your thinking. Rules and dogma live in the land of the mind. Your capacity to ‘feel’ connects you to the living landscape of love and limitlessness. We’re not talking about emotions here, which are the feelings + the story. This is your capacity to feel, sense and know. The more that you own your feeling, the more fine-tuned your discernment becomes.
4. Spend time in the silence of spaciousness. Bask in the ‘nowhere to go and nothing to do.’ Luxuriate in the ‘nothing’s missing and there’s more.’ As you experience yourself as the pulse of life, and not the come and go of thoughts and emotions, you come to know ‘who you are.’ This can’t be taught, it can only be known.

I’m not suggesting that you flaunt the rules just for kicks, though that can sometimes be extremely freeing. I am inviting you to explore what lives in your awareness. True knowing is a living essence and cannot be contained in dogma and dictates. It’s free, just like you.

Image: You Are Here, Jurveston

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Conscious Energy Shift (13m)

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People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering. St. Augustine

I love to travel and most people that I know do too. There’s a freshness and an excitement to explore the new – new places, cultures, new experiences. When you leave your familiar surroundings, there’s an unhooking to your story, your past, your routine. You can even be a new ‘you.’ The change of venue provides an opportunity to engage a new way of seeing, a new way of being.

Travel is not only empowering because of the varied experiences, but because it offers you an opportunity to step out of the matrix of conditioned habits and thinking. The limited time frame also adds an immediacy to the experience. It creates an urgency to squeeze the juice out of the moment, because you may never pass through this particular place again.

What if you brought that focus, that presence, that level of now-ness to you? You are as much of a miracle as the stars and the sun, the moon and the earth. You are an alivening essence, bringing wonder to life through the majesty of being you. Open your eyes and silence the slumber of unawakened living. Open to the powerful presence of now and willingly unleash the wonder of you.

Image: Jour de Brouillard, Olibac

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Conscious Energy Shift (10m)

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