Authentic Power: the Path of the Masters

"To live without a stressful story, to be a lover of what is, even in pain - that's heaven. To be in pain and believe that you shouldn't be in pain - that's hell."
- Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy


How can you find peace when you are surrounded by unpredictable and antagonistic situations, people, and events?

We tend to look outside of ourselves to figure out how to make everything and everyone harmonize with us. But if you are trying to get to San Diego from Phoenix, you do not drive to Denver. And by looking outside of yourself to make you feel better, you are driving the wrong direction. The only place you can ever look to feel peaceful, happy, and fulfilled is inside of yourself.

Take a Journey...

My Journey started when I began to examine what life was, what my existence was about. I began to see that anger wasn't a result of what people had done to me in the past; it was a result of my choosing to dwell on that past. I was my source of my anger. And every time I continued to bring up the past, my anger was justified and I perpetuated it. I kept it alive by staying the victim.

Powering Through...

I discovered that "Power" isn't about making others apologize or be nice to me, or about changing the past or wielding influence over another. True Power is an individual choice and a perspective: You can choose to be happy in this moment, or to continue being unhappy about the past. Staying in the moment is true Power. Because to choose being in the moment is to choose how you feel. The story goes that when China invaded Tibet, a western journalist asked the Dalai Lama how he could be so peaceful in the face of such violence. The Dalai Lama asked the journalist, "Should they also take my mind?"

This is Power...

So try this Eckhart Tolle exercise to be fully in the moment: Just for this moment, feel your awareness as you sit in your chair. Observe yourself. Feel your hands from the inside - not by using your mind to think about them, just notice what your hands feel like from the inside. Are they large or small? Tingling or heavy? Can you feel your feet from the inside? Notice how they feel for a moment. That feeling in your feet and hands is your consciousness, who you really are. Notice your breath as it fills up your lungs, then notice the air as it exits your body. This intense noticing of your body and its "beingness" is Awareness, your Being, you in the Now.

Do you see how there is only your hands and your feet when you are doing this? Do you see how in the moment of noticing your hands and feet, you let go of the past and those feelings associated with past events? Try also feeling your head, your ears, your legs, your whole body. The more you practice this, the longer you can do it, the clearer you become. Other ways to be in the now include creative endeavors, such as drawing, carpentry, dancing, martial arts, and writing. Try any of these and notice how you delve completely into your creation. You let go of the need to control, and yet you are still very in control. The difference is that you are aware.

This moment - the Now - is all there ever is. Our "mental mind" tells us differently, that we have to focus on our past and worry about the future. But past and future do not exist. Our mental mind tells us "of course they exist! Look how screwed we were last time! We must be prepared so we are not screwed the next time!" and then tries to get us to worry about the future again so that we don't get screwed again, so that we can watch "them" even more carefully, so that we can know when we're about to be duped or hurt, so that we can have a witty or intelligent retort ready, so that we can prevent horrible things or great embarrassments, so that we can figure it all out, so that we can make our next move, etc. etc. etc.

Let that go. Sit in your chair, feel your body in that chair, your feet on the ground. You are grounded like a tree, your energy radiates up to connect with the sky. You are here in the Now. This is your Power. This is a spiritual practice. When you practice it, you are exercising your spiritual muscle. Soon, as your muscle builds, it becomes easier, and you begin to feel good about life, yourself, your relationships, your path, your choices. You let go of the need to be in control, and suddenly you see that you are in control. Because when you are being still, and in the Now, you can hear the wisdom of your intuition.

Feel Good...

The only thing we are required to do to lead a fulfilled, happy, prosperous life, is to feel good and be in the moment.

Our bimonthly group is practicing noticing when we feel fear, frustration, annoyance, etc. This practice is primarily to dissipate negative feelings by bringing our attention to the emotion. When we observe our negative feelings, our awareness processes it quickly, and it dissipates almost as soon as you turn on the "oberservation mode." Below is the exercise our group is practicing for the next two weeks. After a few weeks, I'll blog about the group's general observations.

To learn more about being in the Moment, check out Eckhart Tolle's books or CDs titled "A New Earth" or "The Power of Now". To learn more about why feeling good will benefit you overall, read or listen to the Abraham-Hicks book or CD "The Law of Attraction". These books are just a few that I have read recently, but there are many other wonderful spiritual teachers with books, CDs, and DVDs out there, so find the ones that jump out at you, and try them!

Eckhart Tolle, Abraham, Byron Katie, and other spiritual leaders say that nothing is more important than that you feel good. This exercise is about noticing how often and why negative feelings arise, and how when we are in the moment and being aware, these bad feelings tend to process and dissipate. For the next several days, your homework is to notice whenever you feel bad - sad, frustrated, annoyed, defensive, angry. Notice the negative feelings, then ask yourself:

* Do I want someone else or something else to change to make me feel better?
* Am I judging me or someone else?
* Am I defending my position for feeling bad?

Then take the perspective of the Observer who is watching your negative feelings. Just notice them from an aware, conscious place. When you do this, what happens to your feelings?

Try not to beat yourself up or judge yourself as you observe, just notice what your feelings are, and watch them dissipate. This is a spiritual practice, so try it for the next several days until our meeting, and see if it doesn't make you more aware of old patterns.

The Little Voice

Every morning when I type in the day in my personal journal (Monday, Tuesday, etc.), a voice in my head says “Another Monday?” As if a multitude of Mondays has gone by and that one thing I wanted to have happen, hasn’t happened yet. While this little voice seems harmless, it’s repetitive subtle questioning is actually pretty damaging; first, because it is wrong, and second, because it is piling on criticism every morning, almost subconsciously.

In studying egos, I have learned that they work inside every individual like a separate entity. The ego’s job is to give the person an identity. That is not bad–we all need our egos to function in this world. But the ego will try to form an identity for you that will judge everyone and exaggerate your status in the world around you: “I’m all that and a bag of chips” is a familiar ego type; but just as notable is the “I’m not as good as they are.” And yes, even when a person experiences “Yet another Tuesday” with the feeling that you’ve missed out or aren’t getting it right, that’s the ego too.

In the end, the ego is giving you an identity to let you know where you measure up in the world around you by judging people, situations, events, objects, creatures, whatever comes before you. These judgments define and label these things and can be useful. But when you hear criticism come from your lips or your mind, about yourself or another, that is always the ego.

The way to stop the criticism is to bring attention to it. Bring your awareness to the feelings and thoughts that are behind the criticisn. Observe yourself feeling the negative, critical thinking. When you do this, the criticism and negative emotions tend to melt away.

Also, be careful not to beat yourself up for criticizing, as that’s the ego too. Instead, go back to the observing (even of the self-criticizing), and see what happens. This how you bring awareness into your world, and how you begin to awaken. This is being fully conscious.

I’m not waiting for anything better or more to come into my life! When I told a curious friend once that I wasn’t really job-job hunting, she said, “Oh I get it, you’re creating!”

Exactly!

I suppose “creating” can be construed to imply I am hoping to finish making something, but hey, this creation stage of my life is really all that life is, and I am doing my best to work on “not waiting for anything.” I am in the moment as much as possible, and have an entirely new approach to life: I take a step, stop and observe where the Universe opens a door or urges me to go. So an opportunity comes up, I take a step, stop and observe. And though my life now may seem to not fit into America’s definition of successful, I can tell you that my life once did fit into that definition, and I paid a high price for that success. I learned a lot, and earned enough to financially cover me for the first several months of creating, and for that I am grateful! But to be honest, I have no idea how the money continues to come in just when I need it and how much I need. I don’t live “well” or have extra money lying around but if I told you I was in Hawaii a month ago, you’d probably think I was lying (photo is of the harbor on Kauai).

Life is about creating - and when you feel like you don't have control, that's when you know your ego is trying to take over and get control. The ego needs to feel in control and needs to narrate that control. So when I heard my ego say "It's another Monday" this morning, I realized I needed to let the desire to control go, and acknowledge that I am successfully creating.

Stow-aways and Angels

My Journey began 3 years ago on a ship called Spirit in the Gulf of Alaska. It carried 1500 wide-eyed cruisers, 200 of whom were seekers and 3 who were self-described psychics.

I was born in Alaska, so my point for being on this cruise was really to see Sylvia Browne in action, maybe get a reading as an audience member, and, as a pleasant happenstance, visit the towns in the area of Alaska where I'd been born.

Two hundred people went to Sylvia's event on that cruise ship, but maybe if she didn't connect with me, her fellow psychics, John Holland and Gordon Smith, would pick something up. I didn't know who they were, but I figured they must be good if they were traveling with Sylvia. (As some may be aware, both Holland and Smith have become fairly famous psychics in the U.S. and the U.K.)

In the end, Sylvia granted everyone in the audience one question. I got to ask the question that was keeing me up at night: "What work should I be doing?" I was miserable as a proposal manager, though I loved to write. And the climate at work was progressively getting worse, as employees were being under-paid and over-worked to build a corporate empire. I had run into dead-ends on other career avenues that seemed promising, so I wanted to see what "the other side" had to say. It was really just a last-ditch, intriguing idea that came to me, and I figured, why not? I really thought at the time that this would be my only foray into the world of "psychics" and "visionaries."

Sylvia's answer: "Medical." When I stared at her blankly she said, "Healing, dear. It's all the same."

I'm pretty sure I wore the floorboards out in our cabin the next few days, trying to figure out how I could possibly have gone so wrong in my life. How did I get so off track? I had a degree in journalism for Pete's sake. Maybe Sylvia got me mixed up with the guy behind me. But if not, what was I supposed to do...? Go back to school to become a doctor or registered nurse? Good God, how many years of school and dollars would that be!? Truthfully, I didn't know what a healer really was anyway...Probably something to do with a mortar and pestle. I resigned myself to going home and looking at other career options.

But on the last morning, as my mom, daughter and I had breakfast in the restaurant on the ship, we began to talk to a lady who'd been part of the Sylvia Browne event. Mom asked her what she did for a living. The woman answered that she was an angel teacher. My somewhat skeptical, but quasi-open-minded mother, shifted ever so slightly in her seat to get a better view of this woman. Meanwhile, something inside of me said, "Cool!" But I wasn't sure why...I asked, "What's an angel teacher?"

"I hold classes in which I teach people the very basics of inuition and working with angels. I've seen and talked to angels all of my life."

My world suddenly seemed to open up - there were such things as angel teachers!? Wow, there are people who can talk to just angels!? Like Sylvia just talks to dead people!? How cool was that!? We chatted more, and finally I told her I'd been a little perplexed about Sylvia's answer of "medical or healing." The angel lady told me that healing often can be emotional, spiritual, and mental, not just physical, and that there were so many different kinds of healing, I should seek out like-minded people in my community.

I wasn't exactly sure what a like-minded person was, but I was resolved to find them. So when I returned to Alaska, I Googled "Spiritual Alaska" and "like-minded Alaska" and "psychics Alaska," but found only scarey products and dead ends.

Just a few days later, I went to an appointment at the eye doctor's (note the word "eye," as in "organ to see with."). There, sitting on a side table was a magazine called The Alaska Wellness Magazine. I picked up a copy from sheer boredom, and began to read. I hardly opened the front cover when I had to sit up and start flipping pages to be sure of what I was seeing. There before me - page after page - were advertisements after articles after advertisements of psychics and healers of modalities I'd never heard of before. Then I found the article with the title: "I Talk to Angels."

The "I Talk to Angels" author included her email address in the article, so I contacted her and got a reading. That amazing connection started my Journey: from a boat in the Gulf of Alaska, to a doctor's office in downtown Anchorage, to a medium's office in my home town. I discovered not long after this, that I was not just a physical, mental and emotional being, but that I was also spiritual, as is everyone. And that is why we are all Journiers, capable of creating the lives we want, capable of talking to angels and guides, and talking to each other - awake, asleep, this side or that. We are here on Earth to live our lives to the fullest, and that is why I am taking my Journal online. To fulfill my two passions: Writing and inspiring.

The intent of this blog is not to impose my beliefs on anyone; it is simply to share my Journey, so that it might inspire others who are seeking their own truth and experiencing their own Journey.

As far as "the work that I should be doing" - it is still unfolding. I've not limited myself to any one thing, and strangely, I don't have a "job-job" anymore. I've opened myself to whatever opportunities come my way. Am I in healing? Maybe. If you look at life from the perspective that we're all here to help each other out. I do write grants to give healers resources and support so they can heal; I am writing a business plan with healers to create healing facilities and programs. I am also part of an effort to help post-traumatic stress disorder veterans and civilians receive psychiatric service dogs. So, yes, maybe I am a healer! If you look at it the way that the janitor at NASA looks at the world: "I help send astronauts to the moon." I like that guy! We should all be so aware of our contributions - because they matter, and every contribution that we make does effect the rest of the world.