by Ginger | Feb 27, 2021 | Blog
Recently, I’ve been working on letting go of some old stories of mine which are rooted in the illusion of separation. I was reviewing Pema Chodrin’s book Start Where You Are and came across a story that spoke to me. She is describing the Buddhist teaching about being a child of illusion. This is not about staying in the illusion of separation, but about understanding that the world is not as solid or fixed as we often make it through our labels and stories. It reminds us to remain in a child-like state of openness to the wonder and experience of each moment.
I share the following excerpt for you to meditate upon:
We generally interpret the world so heavily in terms of good and bad, happy and sad, nice and not nice that the world doesn’t get a chance to speak for itself. When we say, “Be a child of illusion,” we’re beginning to get at this fresh way of looking when we’re not caught in our hope and fear. We become mindful, awake, and gentle with our hope and fear. We see them clearly with less bias, less judgment, less sense of a heavy trip. When this happens, the world will speak for itself.
I heard a story about Trungpa Rinpoche sitting in a garden with His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. People were standing around at a distance, close enough to hear but far enough away to give them privacy and space. It was a beautiful day. These two gentlemen had been sitting in the garden for a long time, just sitting there not saying anything. Time went on, and they just sat in the garden not saying anything and seeming to enjoy it very much. Then Trungpa Rinpoche broke the silence and began to laugh. He said to Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, pointing across the lawn, “They call that a tree.” Whereupon Khyentse Rinpoche started to laugh too.
image courtesy of jarmoluk on Pixabay
by Ginger | Jan 31, 2021 | Blog
Like many these days, I’ve been working on finding the balance between remaining detached while being fully present with what’s happening in our world. Many ancient spiritual traditions teach a version of how to be in our witness self, being in the world but not of it. This means being fully grounded, aware and participating in this world but not coming from the fears, false beliefs or entanglements of the lower self/ ego. It means to remain balanced, detached and coming from unconditional love. It does not mean to stand aside and look the other way as if you have no connection to what is happening in the world. How do we remain fully present in a world with increasing levels of anger, blame and violence surfacing which may feel uncomfortable or even painful?
One step is to keep yourself tuned into Divine Truth to help keep you resonating with higher frequencies and not get pulled into the lower frequency energies of anger in some of our current political and social debates. The debates themselves can be a great tool for self-evaluation and making change, but how we approach those debates, with resentment and suspicion or with respect and openness, is key to the results we will see.
Marsha Hankins recently wrote some useful suggestions for seeing clearly through untruth and biased opinion in her blog titled Do You Know When You’re Being Manipulated? We don’t have to invalidate someone else’s feelings or perspective in order to validate our truth and remain in alignment with our divine self. We do have a responsibility to discern the accuracy of information we might use to guide our actions or inform the kinds of questions we’re asking our Soul for our own clearing.
Another step is to welcome all experiences, including the controversy and chaos, for the healing they bring. How can we heal our darkness, our separation, unless we allow ourselves to bring it to the surface? You can’t truly clean out an old closet if you aren’t willing to pull everything out and look at it. At first, the big piles of stuff that we had hidden might feel overwhelming, but this process of weeding out what no longer serves us is essential for our individual and collective healing. Lori Rock wrote a blog in December on The Mastery of Gratitude which reminds us of the value of gratitude for growth opportunities in all of our experiences, including the unpleasant and uncomfortable ones.
In order to navigate these sometimes muddy waters of change and evolution, we will need to be vigilant with how our own energy is vibrating and whether we are remaining in alignment with our truth within. But the rewards are exponential. Imagine living in this world and seeing the divinity in everything, the opportunity for growth in every situation, the ability to connect on all levels with all beings! This is the heaven on earth that spiritual masters have taught for ages.
Being in the witness self is not a passive state, but one of active, loving engagement. And if we still have judgments or attachments holding us out of balance, then it will take some clearing work on our part. But we are ready for it and now is certainly the time. Make a commitment to take a pause and look at what triggers your emotions or bias the moment it comes to your awareness. Before you emphatically nod or shake your head, look within for the deeper truth. Ask your Soul to help you understand all of the perspectives involved. Even pausing for a few moments in your day to tune in and ask for clarity can go a long way to raising your consciousness and helping you to heal.
We can be part of a great spiritual transformation or we can see our world as being torn apart. Which version do you choose to witness?
picture courtesy of jplenio at Pixabay
by Ginger | Dec 30, 2020 | Blog
Like many people these days, you might be feeling a little (or a lot) stuck. Globally, we’ve been in a phase of deep review of old beliefs, old patterns, old paradigms. This can sometimes feel like a tedious, even painful, process. Yet, it’s truly necessary for new life, new patterns, new creations. This global pandemic is giving us, collectively and individually, the opportunity to re-evaluate many aspects of our lives, culture and institutions. It can bring up fear, resistance, anger, blame, judgment and even violence or abuses of power. We may feel like we’ve been staring at these issues so intently that we’re ready to just be done with it, but if we’re still not seeing significant outer change in our situation then feelings of doubt and confusion may come bubbling up. So, we might be feeling stuck right about now.
And it’s okay to feel stuck. Really. Our natural instinct is to struggle against feeling stuck by reaching for the nearest action or “solution” just so the lower self/ego can feel a little bit more in control again. We may even understand intellectually that what we’re doing is just a band-aid that will have no real, lasting effect, but we reach for the temporary relief anyway.
What if you give yourself permission just to allow your stuckness? I don’t mean to just sit in your living room perpetually doing nothing. I mean, taking time each day to be quiet with yourself, including the scared, stuck parts, and allow them to just be without trying to fix or change or solve them. Just be present with those emotions. Breathe them in, really get in touch with all the emotions underneath the stuckness, then breathe out with release. Then breathe them in again. And so on. Allow what comes.
I’m not suggesting that this is a magic formula which will instantly stop the feelings of being stuck. You might feel stuck for a while. And, your particular situation may require some form of more immediate response in the outer world. Of course, you should do what you need to take care of immediate needs. But, instead of taking blind action to get it over with and then burying the emotions so that you can feel “done with it”, try staying conscious of those continuing feelings of confusion and ambiguity. Wherever we bring our awareness, our consciousness, we bring healing and light. This way, we help to release the emotional charge of fear and judgment as we open ourselves to deeper understanding. When we remain present and conscious, even in times of self-doubt, we activate our own inner creativity and discover inspiration for moving forward in ways we weren’t even able to imagine previously.
So, commit to remaining open and accepting even when you don’t immediately see the way forward. Take an action step when you need to but stay receptive to new directions and course changes as the way becomes clearer. Allow the feelings of being stuck to teach you and guide you rather than trying to get rid of them. Being stuck may seem like a weak and helpless place to be, but when we let go of resistance we find great power and potential within. Our emotional blocks can be useful teachers if we allow ourselves to be still and listen.
Try the following e-book for more insights about working through feelings of being stuck:
Getting Unstuck: The Inspiration to Move Forward Again! by Lori Rock
Blog image courtesy of Pixabay
by Ginger | Nov 30, 2020 | Blog
Many traditions include some version of a festival of lights around this time of year. We are going into the darkest season, so there is a natural desire to balance that out with more light. This season is also a time of quiet and going within, into the creation void, so it’s also a great time to see where we can reflect more of our inner Light out in the world. Are you willing to let your true Light shine?
For many, the answer is an emphatic “yes” until the realization surfaces that shining our Light more brightly may also highlight our shadows. Fear comes up that others will see our darkness, or even that we will see our own darkness more clearly, and we start to pull back within. Yet, that is also the gift of shining our Light – to more easily identify that which is still unhealed within us, that which is still in the illusion of separation. So, it may feel safer to hold back, but that also holds us back from our greatest healing.
Our Divine Light is of Source, the One Source, the source of what we believe is our light and also our dark. They are One. It is only in the illusion that we see them as separate. In order to fully actualize our healing light, we must acknowledge that this is the same creative power that created our belief in our dark. It is the same creative source.
This season we invite you to celebrate your own festival of lights- to truly honor your inner Light. Allow your Light to shine and if you also see your dark, let go of the judgments and hold gratitude for the opportunity to see all that much more clearly in order to allow healing. This is not about excusing or glossing over that which is out of alignment within ourselves, what we might call our dark, but about forgiving our self-judgment, owning our responsibility for creating it and beginning the healing process.
So, are you willing to let your true Light shine, unconditionally? Take a deep breath and take a moment to ask this question sincerely. Make a commitment to let your Light shine and feel the freedom of releasing yourself from all expectations of where that will lead you. May your inner Light shine with radiance and joy!
picture courtesy of Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay“>Myriams-Fotos on Pixabay
by Ginger | Oct 30, 2020 | Blog
One of my spiritual teachers, Kris Duffy, used to tell a parable she learned from a Native American tradition. It went something like this: Every morning, a man would wake and ask Great Spirit, “Is today a good day to die?” and every morning he would hear “No” and then go about his daily routine, living his life as usual. One morning, he awoke and asked, “Is today a good day to die?” and he heard, “Yes.” The man went about his daily routine, living his life as usual, and then he died.
That’s how she would tell the story, in just that kind of spartan language. And I remember that I really didn’t like that story the first few times I heard it! It seemed so stark to me. I wanted more. Intellectually, I believed that I understood the point of the parable but I didn’t fully know what it meant from a place of true wisdom.
One day, I was inspired to ask the same question of myself and I heard, “Yes.” Now, my Soul didn’t literally mean that it was a day for me to die. To me, that “yes” meant that I was in a place of peace and balance and if I did leave this physical life in that moment, I would do so with ease and a sense of completion. That’s when I understood the deeper truth of that parable for me. My desire to hear some profound revelation the man experienced before he died or some great deed that he did came from the energy of incompletion and lack. The man in the parable didn’t need to do anything special on that day because he had no regrets and no unfinished business. He had lived a life that was aligned with his divine purpose, in sync with All That Is, so when it was time for him to leave his earthly life, he was already in perfect surrender.
Viewed from this perspective, asking this question of ourselves can be empowering rather than deflating. It can be used as an internal barometer to check in with your own energy field. Are you in balance? Are you at ease? Are you living in your divine purpose? If not, you can ask your Soul what you may still be holding onto and what you need to do in that moment to shift your energy and come back into alignment.
By living in a way that keeps us in divine peace and surrender at all times then any change in our lives becomes a simple transition into another phase. It becomes just another experience. May you find that perfect balance within!
Image by Ralf Kunze from Pixabay
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