Guided Meditation • Visualization • Mindfulness

Moral relativism is what our religious, societal, and political systems are deathly afraid of.  They tell us that unless we obey the rules, the laws, and the credos of our society, society will fall into chaos.

Moral relativism is fed by the erroneous beliefs that human beings are alone (that is, non-interrelated to other beings) and essentially morally corrupted.  So, if I do what is good for me and you do what is good for you then, boom! chaos erupts. 

 If you turn on the television, read the paper, or if you’ve lost your home recently, then there is plenty of evidence to substantiate this belief. 

We are driven by fear, and the evidence of our fears. 

We are taught that we can not trust ourselves or our neighbors to do the right thing.  We are taught that people have to be told or coherced into doing what’s good or what’s right.  Then we are taught to ignore the deep sense of resentment or longing that arises for listening to the myriad voices that always seem to know better than we do.   

I find it interesting though that most people intuitively know the good when they see it and they know what’s right for them when they feel it.  I also find it interesting that on the occasion when we follow our intuitive feelings, it turns out to be the right thing.  Could it be that we are hardwired to know the good, rather than hardwired to be selfish?  

There was a time in our recent history where inter-racial marriage was illegal and considered immoral, the way same sex marriage is today.  But there were many individuals, my parents for example, who had the courage to move beyond this fearful conditioned belief.  Today we see them as pioneers, but back then they would have been at the apex of the axis of evil, or gasp! perverts.

Was is it inside of us that recognizes error as error and truth as truth?  Is it our conscience, our Source, our Soul, our Self?  And why aren’t we given the tools to explore the nature of ourselves beyond what we’ve been told?  Because then the world would change.  The current power structures couldn’t survive as they are if the majority of people were Authentically Empowered (thanks Gary Zukav).  If we were told that we were born into love rather than sin, if we were taught to trust and then develop our innate goodness and our intuition, then we wouldn’t need to be told what to believe, how to behave, and how to feel; rather we would know and we would act according to that knowing.

True, for some,  its a long way from where they are now to being authentically empowered, but it isn’t that far for you, if you’re here, reading this entry. 
 

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“Live your passion and you’ll always have money in your pocket!”  That’s what I told my youngest daughter the other night while I was tucking her into bed.

Passion is a strange conversation to have with an almost seven year old at bedtime, but she’s searching for a way to express her unique, and I think audacious, point of view about life.  “We’ll go see Jerry at the Gymnastics studio on Saturday and take a cheerleading class,” I said.  She is really excited.

Passion is a gift. Passion tells us why we’re here and what we’ve come to share and to express with the people around us.  Passion doesn’t have to be about something big.  We can be passionate about flowers, or sunny days, or reptiles.  What’s most important is that we are able to express that passion with enthusiasm and then share it with others.  Passion is a great, good thing.

If you don’t know what your passion is then ask yourself, “If I had 20 million dollars, what would I buy and how would I live?”  Take your time and really let the answer come from within, let the answer fill your heart, let it create an energy within you.

But what if the answer both exhilarates you and makes you sad?  What if your answer is to buy a sail boat and sail around the world…but you remember the kids, and being the president of the PTA, and making sure mother takes her medications, etc…What if sailing around the world is too impractical?  Well, what about just taking sailing lessons and taking your mother and your kids with you.  Yes you can find a creative way to make your passion work for you right now. 

How much is your passion worth to you?  If you are always finding excuses why you can’t live your passion then maybe being happy, I mean really happy, isn’t worth that much to you.  Or, maybe that “thing” you dream about is just a fantasy and not a passion.  If that’s true, then ask yourself again, meditate on it, contemplate what would bring you the most joy in this moment, and invite passion into your life today!

With Love,
Krista 

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“Why do you keep focusing your attention on what you do not want?” This question was asked over and over again at the seminar I attended a few months ago on *The Law of Attraction by Ester and Jerry Hicks. 

The Law of Attraction simply states that whatever you think about consistently you experience, so if you don’t like your life’s experiences then change your thinking.  That is, if you keep focusing on what’s not working in your life you’ll never be able to create what it is you really want.

Sitting there in the audience watching person after person go up on stage and have this same question posed to them, I became acutely aware of many of the same repetitive and negative thought patterns within myself.

 I left the seminar convinced that negative thinking is useless.  Whether you believe in the Law of Attraction or not, repetitive negative thinking and haranguing about what is not working in your life, who did what to whom, what Mary should do about Bob etc…creates internal chaos which inevitably leads to external chaos. 

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by Kris King

Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down.
                —–Eckhart Tolle

I remember when I was first certain that I wanted to pursue my acting dreams while living in Springfield, IL. After driving back and forth to Chicago for auditions, it was clear to me that I needed to move to Los Angeles if I were to have a real shot at it. I sat with that knowing for at least a year before it hit me that time was not going to allow me to wait for a more favorable circumstance. At that point, it wasn’t what I needed to do that was an issue; it was how I will do it.

The major obstacle for human beings is the thinking mind. Alternatively, the human mind is the best tool ever given to you. If used in unison with the soul, the mind helps to create some of the grandest ideas, the most loving gestures, and numerous opportunities. The mind, unaccompanied, creates conflict, strife, and problems that can lead to the most erroneous behavior. In other words, when the mind plays the role of the sidekick to the superhero, the bad guys are captured and the town rejoices. However, when the mind starts acting as if it is the hero and feels that it doesn’t need any assistance, it will eventually self-destruct trying to save the town, ultimately taking the town down with it.

The problem seems to be that most people are trying to use their mind for the what as opposed to the how. To piggy back off my earlier example, when contemplating the move to Los Angeles, it was clear that I needed to move there, I just didn’t know how I was going to do it. So I explored a few different options. I thought about getting a loan. I even thought about saving up for a year or two, then moving. Until I eventually came to the obvious decision to sell my home and use the money to move and pay off some debt before I left. My mind made an assessment of what my options was, weeded out what wouldn’t work, leaving me with the best available option based on my circumstances. Two months later, I was in L.A.  

Your soul is all knowing. Your mind is all memory. If the mind is left unattended, all of your decisions will be made from past experiences. And can you blame it? The mind is trained to go into the storage room of any similar situation that you are currently in, see what you did in that situation, then act out a similar, if not an exact solution even if that solution didn’t work the last time. This is because it has no new data to work with. At least it seems this way.

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It doesn’t matter how much we think we know or what we say we believe.  What matters is whether or not are we living our deepest beliefs with integrity. 

We talk about peace, love, and compassion but so few of us live these principles.  Our compassion extends only to the people who think like we do, not to the person who abused us.  Our peace extends only to the people who believe in what what we believe, not to the non-believer.  Our love is only for those who please and validate us, not for the person who disagrees with us. 

Pride.  We used to talk about pride, now we talk about ego.  Most of us don’t really understand what the ego is, there are so many different ways of defining it, but pride we understand.  Pride and unconsciousness, (”Father forgive them they know not what they do”), is what keeps us from living in joy. Pride. It’s pride that keeps us from apologizing to our spouse or our children when we’ve been too harsh with them.  It’s pride that keeps us from telling them that we love them.  It’s pride that keeps us on the edges of our relationships–never to experience the fullness and richness of the other person’s company. 

Humility.  Humility is pride’s opposite.  True humility is an act of courage because it is often misconstrued and misunderstood as weakness.  To be humble is to stand in a place of power, to recognize the shortcomings of our pridefulness and then let go.  It takes humility plus courage to live the deepest and fullest expression of Life.  

Action. To speak of humility, to speak of compassion, to speak of love, is not the same as being humility, as being compassion, and being love.  This is true spirituality.

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Good Vibrations

How does the material world exist if the fundamental building blocks of matter have no mass?  And what does this have to do with meditation, visualization, and your wellbeing? 

Your body and everything else in the universe may look solid; but all matter is made up of particles, particles that have no mass.  Science has yet to quantify exactly what this is all about, but the mystic and the metaphysician will tell you that the fundamental building blocks of life is Source energy…moving, oscillating, vibrating, living energy. You are Source energy in a beautiful and unique form. 

You direct this energy with your thinking and with your feeling.  That is, you have a free will to do whatever you want with this energy.  If, for example, you direct your thoughts towards something that makes you feel sad, disappointed, or resentful, the vibratory nature of your being slows down and you feel drained, tired, or depressed.  Why?  Because your sense of wellbeing is directly related to the quality your thinking, and your thoughts direct the vibration and flow of your energy.

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Stop trying to fix your family and friends, they won’t thank you for it!
Happiness, Intention, and Karma

A good way to frustrate yourself, waste time, and create tension in your relationships is by trying “fix” your family and friends.

We have all experienced the aggravation that arises from trying to help a loved one or a friend only to have our advice and intentions ignored, belittled, or used as ammunition in the battle for “whose right.”

The reason why our seemingly good intentions fail, is because the deeper, truer, inner intention is tainted by self gratification.
 
For example:  Mary has a friend Betsy, who is always depressed.  Mary loves Betsy and wants help her.  Mary treats Betsy to lunch, buys her spiritually uplifting books to read, recommends seminars and classes to take, tells Betsy what a terrific person she is, and so on. 

Mary’s thoughts about Betsy are often, “she’s such a great person.  If she’d only…..she’d be so much happier.”  Mary’s feelings about Betsy range from frustration, to pity, and back again because although Betsy complains a lot she will not listen to Mary.
 
Why aren’t Mary’s efforts to help her friend working?  Does Mary truly see her friend as complete, whole, and perfect?  Or does Mary see someone who needs “fixing” or saving?  How do you think Mary will feel once her friend is fixed?  Who is she really trying to make feel better? 

Mary’s inner/subconscious intentions are in conflict with her outer/conscious intentions.  Mary’s conflicting intentions contaminates the outcome, thus Betsy never gets “fixed” and Mary remains frustrated.  This happens for a number reasons: 

1.  Since Betsy complains a lot about her life situation, we can assume that Betsy sees herself and her life as flawed.
Mary perceives Betsy’s complaining as a desire to be “fixed” or helped in some way.  Unfortunately, Mary’s attempts at helping her friend fail because her perception of Betsy is of someone who is broken…thus Mary unwittingly perpetuates Betsy’s negative self image.

The law of karma states that  every action (intention) has an equally corresponding reaction (manifestation).  Thus, Mary continues to feel frustrated in her friendship because her feelings about Betsy are negative to begin with.  That is, she can not create a positive outcome for herself and her friend as long as she is coming from a negative inner space.  Mary does not really believe that Betsy is a terrifically whole person, her deeper belief is that there is something wrong with Betsy that needs fixing.

2.  There is a Hindu saying that only a god can worship a god.  What this means is that when we are in the awareness of our inherent and divine perfection we see It in the world around us.  Conversely, when we are in lack consciousness, we will see lack in others, in our relationships, and in our world.

Since Mary’s attention is not on her own perfection, Mary’s perceived inadequacies of Betsy are an unconscious mirror of Mary’s own perceived inadequacies. Here Mary’s deeper unconscious intention in fixing Betsy, who represents the outer world, is about Mary feeling better and ultimately more complete.

3.  It is possible that Mary has a “savior” or a “martyr” identity.  Thus Mary’s need to fix Betsy, will enhance and feed
this ego identity.  When Betsy doesn’t listen to Mary, the “savior” feels frustration. The “martyr” identity is perpetuated also when Betsy doesn’t listen because now Mary’s thoughts and feelings revolve around self-pity.

4.  The ego (unconscious, uncontrolled, and reactive thinking) thrives on feelings of power.  If Mary was very present during her time with Betsy, especially when the conversation or her actions revolved around fixing Betsy, there would be a tingling sensation in the solar plexus, accompanied by a feeling of power or superiority.  Why?  Because Mary knows more than Betsy about how to fix Betsy’s life, what books to read, and so on.

This Week’s Mindfulness Practice:
1. Be mindful of your intentions.  What’s really motivating you in your relationships? 
2.  Work on feeling your own completeness and acknowledge the completeness of others.

For more on topics about relationships and personal freedom, please attend my “A New Earth Workshop:  Working with the teachings of Eckhart Tolle,” begining July 8th or my “Women’s Wisdom Workshop.”

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Truth is not written to stimulate the mind or to create another empty belief system. So when reading the quotation below, or any other spiritual texts or essays, it is important to feel your way through the material.

Know that wisdom is integral to your being…ask and ye shall know.

Quote for contemplation: “…a spiritually awake person…looks with compassion on those whom he knows are in ignorance of their true identity or those who do not understand the nature of God’s world,” (The Contemplative Life, by Joel Goldsmith).

Question for contemplation: What is the difference between pity and compassion?

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