Archive for December, 2008
New Years Eve 2008
By Jamie Gilroy
- Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
I felt it important to add one last blog for 2008. I’ve been in a kind of “holidaze” recently and just haven’t felt compelled to write. I can hear some of my beloveds groaning at that last comment. I know that I’ve been MIA but that’s OK. I still have plenty to share and more to say. Will you stay tuned in 09? I hope so.
Today however is the last day of 08. Another wonderful year has come and gone. Filled with so much living, a little procrastination, and a whole lot of love. It was, as they all are really, a fine year. I made every attempt to end this year on a high note. So that meant getting up at 5am, assembling my mountain bike gear, loading the bike in the truck and heading off to a 7am client meeting. As soon as I was finished with the meeting I dialed my buddy and brother in arms Jimmy and told him I was on my way to the woods. He and Moon (the man) and Takoda (the dog) met me there and we headed out just as the snow started falling. It was cold and silent except for the crunching of our tires in the leftover snow from the last storm. What a sweet ride we had. Up and down, crossing streams and hopping logs. The snow made the roots and rocks slicker than usual which forced me to relax and let the bike slide finding its own way. Sometimes the more you fight the more you fall and today I let the elements determine my line – and stayed upright as a result. Sometimes in Life it’s when we relinquish the need to force things and control situations that we make a really simple discovery. The trail becomes one continuous thread of ups and downs, obstacles and challenges, and yet we stay calm and focused – totally relaxed and in the flow.
Today in the woods was one of those days. We paused in an old growth Hemlock forest to catch our breaths and appreciate the quietude. The last day of another year that for so many has been filled with tremendous stress and worry. As I exhaled watching my breath in the form of vapor disappear into the snowy sky I set loose a heartfelt wish:
That this coming year be filled with such an abundance of all good things for all living beings. May their lives be filled with joy and peace. May every and all their wishes come true starting today. And as I let this intent go I felt all those good wishes manifest inside myself – coming right back to me. Thank you is all I can say right now.
Thank you and blessings for the New Year.
J
Movies With A Master
By Rita Rivera Fox
- Thursday, December 11th, 2008
Movies With A Master
I am a Dreamer and I am dreaming all the time. Often I find that my dream can be enhanced by stepping into someone else’s dream to observe the way they interpret life as they share their unique point of view. The men and women who make movies are the quintessential dreamers, desiring to share their dream, their perspective and their story with all of us. They make it possible for us to experience life from many points of view and through many eyes and to step outside of our well- worn interpretive track, into something full of surprise and wonder.
When I was new to the Toltec path and practicing deconstructing my belief structure, very often, my own well trained and ubiquitous programmed mind would pitch a fit. Understanding, that a programmed mind in reaction is a no- win situation, I would take myself off to see a movie, my logic being, “I am so tired of my own story might as well go and observe somebody else’s story and get a much needed break.” You see, I was trained by a master movie-goer, one who understood the full ramifications of sitting in the dark and letting go of a familiar reality in exchange for something completely new. Don Miguel Ruiz was such a master.
I used to have opinions about the type of movies I watched, no violence, no horror, no “stupid” comedies, only movies “with a message and of social and cultural importance.” Yes my friends,that was my program talking, set to the personal importance function. So when I started going to matinees with don Miguel, my training as his apprentice reached new levels of intensity. I remember objecting strongly to going to a war-like, dark, violent movie with him. As he was purchasing the tickets, he was nodding his head and smiling as though he was actually listening to my objections about why I could not possibly ever agree to see this movie with him.
Next thing I knew, we are sitting in the dark and men with spears and dark grotesque masks appeared on the screen, grunting and running each other through with these spears. Blood was every where. My hands moved quickly to cover my eyes, my breathing became shallow, my body became rigid. Very gently, I heard him whisper in my ear in his endearing Mexican accent, “What’s the matter sweetheart, it’s only a dream, it’s not real…open your eyes, take a look, is just a movie.” Slowly the hands came off my eyes, my shoulders relaxed and I looked into his eyes and I saw that he was not reacting to the movie at all. There he was sitting next to me, fully in control of what he was experiencing and still with the adorable smile on this face.
So, I listened , as he instructed me how to observe the movie. I began to detach from the images in front of me. I watched the movie but at the same time I detached from the movie…thinking to myself, this is just a dream…..this is just a movie…it isn’t real. What is real right now is how I am feeling in this moment. What my eyes were seeing was no longer affecting what my body was feeling. I had control over what I was perceiving, because I had awareness and directed my interpretation of what I was observing, consequently, I could maintain “my happy place” watching the most horrendous battles on the screen.
Of course I have my preferences for certain types of movies and I rarely choose now to see a violent movie, but I learned so much about my awareness as I sat in the dark with Miguel and what it means to be awake in this dream while observing another dream at the same time. I learned how not to let my emotions take a story or images and use them to get emotional food from my body. I observed the power of story to capture and direct my attention and practice the art of choice in the moment. Most of all I learned how to observe the “movie of my life” with awareness, taking the events much less personally. Once when I had consented to see what I thought was a truly stupid movie that I assumed was a total waste of my time, Miguel asked me to see the movie “through his eyes” and I don’t remember ever laughing so hard at a film. That experience showed me how so often my opinions are a waste of my time, and generally interfere with my enjoyment of life.
Toltecs have an ancient ceremony called the Mitote, some of you may have experienced such a ceremony, and in the modern day version, watching a movie with one’s fellow Mitote participants, is a vital part of the all night ceremony. It is thought to prepare the mind to detach from taking what it observes so personally and move closer to that magical state of the willing suspension of disbelief that can be a doorway to deeper levels of our dreaming mind. Perhaps this is how I became so fond of the movie experience, equating it with the potential to be opened and moved by the magic of images, music and my imagination.
As we move into the dark part of winter and cold nights keep us at home snuggled up on our couches, I thought I would share a list of movies with you that I have especially enjoyed. It is likely that each has something to say about this mysterious and often wild ride called life. These movies have the potential to moves us closer to understanding what it means to have a dreaming mind and be aware of how our dreams are all connected. I am dreaming. You are dreaming. We are all dreaming and sometimes it is so pleasurable just to rent the DVD and lay back and observe another, ever changing and shifting dream.
Garden State The Sea Within
Neverland The Diving Bell & The Butterfly
Defending Your Life Waking Life
Spirited Away The Fountain
American Beauty Starman
Spring, Summer , Winter, Fall The Razors Edge(original version)
The Emerald Forest Wings of Desire
Ground Hog Day Baraka
The Secret of Roan Inish Faraway So Close
The Motorcycle Diaries Truly ,Madly, Deeply
Little Buddha The Fisher King
Whale Rider The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Harry Potter( all of them) Moulin Rouge
The Golden Compass Winged Migration
Maria Full of Grace Matrix ( trilogy)
X Men Like Water For Chocolate
Chocolat’ Bram Stoker’s Dracula
At Play in the Fields of the Lord Flirting With Disaster
Open Your Eyes Kundun
Rough Magic The Gladiator
I Heart Huckabees
Teotihuacan Testimonial
By Ellen Luksch
- Thursday, December 4th, 2008
A journey to Teo is always a welcome journey into the unknown. The air there shimmers with an energy that opens my perceptions wider than they have ever been and Teo mirrors back all those places where I still deceive myself with undeniable clarity. It is a place where falsehood surfaces and evaporates in the beauty of what is true in myself. I wake up in the middle of the night gripped by Love. The stones talk. I hear my voice in a new way. I watch intentions manifest precisely. I am always broken open in a way that makes me want to stretch more. Everything I think I know dissolves into a discovery of what my heart has to offer. There is nothing that is predictable other than the generosity of our hosts and the support of our companions. In Teo, the mind returns to its proper position of complete surrender to the wordless wisdom and endless freedom of the Heart.
I invite you to join us on our next Journey into the Heart – The Pyramids of Teotihuacán, Mexico, February 5-10, 2009.
You can also join us for a free teleclass to find out what goes on in “Teo,” what a spiritual power journey is, and why it may be just the thing you are looking for.
Why do we withhold Love?
By Ellen Luksch
- Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
Is there possibly a good reason anywhere, at any time that I would withhold love from myself and beyond that from anyone? I asked myself this question a few years back for the first time. I saw how I frequently withheld love from myself through judgment. It was the punishment I gave myself for my “shortcomings”, for not meeting some bar of perfection for my performance. I was not even fully aware of what the criteria were for a “job well done” yet I always seemed to know when I had fallen short. I lived in fear of not being enough. There was a part of me that was always on alert, always watching and evaluating. It often found me lacking. I saw how, subtly and not so subtly, I withheld that same love from others based on how they performed. Had they met my expectations? Had they become the person I needed them to be?
All of this went on below my conscious awareness. I did not know that I was withholding love. I did not realize that I was punishing myself. I was only doing what I knew to do. I was only doing what I had formulated was right and reasonable given the belief system in my head. It did not matter how it made me feel. It did not matter how my body responded to the upset. It was what I knew and apparently it was not much different from what other people did to themselves because I never felt out of place in that way. People may have thought I was too hard on myself at times but they were often just as hard on themselves. And if they weren’t? Then they were less self-aware.
It was a process,·not believing my critic. First, I became very aware of the negativity lost within the chatter that was constant in my mind. I paid attention to the dialog more carefully, finally using the “watcher” to watch myself watching myself. I noted aspects of my chatter that surprised me. I noted aspects of my chatter that were consistently taking the low path. I noted how I created unhappiness with my judgment and then saw how I became more aware of the “flaws” of those around me. My beloved became a problem when I was a problem to myself. When I was happy, he seemed so fine. When I was upset, my mind could rapidly create a story about how his behavior was related to my inability to…
The person who was rarely angry and never judgmental actually had any number of angry and judgmental thoughts and opinions. At first, I held this awareness against myself, particularly because I could not make it stop. I could not control the critic, at least, not for long. Now it simply does not matter. It has stopped being my identity and has become background noise that often makes me laugh. “I don’t really care” was a mantra I used to respond to my critic. It is simply an interpretation of my mind about emotional memory. It is hardly “me”.
The emotional reactions gradually gained my acceptance. They are ancient survival responses that get amplified by my mind or judged and strangled. Now I can simply make the space in my body for that emotional energy to move and it transforms. The outcome of that transformation??? Peace and joy most often follow. It is simply a creation that assists me in the formation of compassion. Once compassion became the favored response another channel of feeling was restored. Now I could feel Life flowing through me continuously. It was a current of energy, now amplified, that felt blissful. Gratitude became an easy way to accentuate the flow. Unrestrained emotional energy opened doorways to joy I had forgotten. Quiet witnessing opened the channel to heart wisdom. I became what I desired, what I had sought. I no longer choose to withhold love but instead choose to shower it upon myself and all of the beloveds in my creation. The “watcher” is beginning to catch on.
For Giving
My mind knows fear
And recalls every instance she has
Interpreted as painful.
I forgive her.
It is what she knows.
She wraps me in yellow
Caution tape.
It causes my body to ache
Even as it makes her secure
For that moment.
Her words are:
What if,
Be careful,
Because,
Why me? Why now?
When? How?
She punishes the rule breakers.
I love her.
It is what she believes.
My heart knows freedom.
She sings to me of a place
Beyond memories, experience or time.
She is forever, for always,
Forgiving, for life.
I surrender my conclusions to her.
In the silence, she responds.
I rejoice in my becoming,
In my coming
Home.
My heart breathes acceptance.
She forgives me.
It is what she knows.
EC Luksch 12/01/08
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